My Daily Life (What is Zero?)

My children often play a math game called "Shisock," which involves basic arithmetic like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

A question that came up during the game was about "zero." Zero plus zero is zero, zero minus zero is zero, zero times zero is zero, but zero divided by zero is infinite.

If you try to divide zero apples into zero portions, you could say it could be divided infinitely. But for my kids, it ends up becoming a simpler understanding: both of us have zero apples, which seems like just one way to do it.

Since my daughter is in first grade, I’m a first-grade mom. I still need to learn a lot about teaching her.

Yoshiko Kuno