WORTHINGTON -- Kindergartners at Prairie Elementary will remember Tuesday as the day a superhero came to school.
His name was Zero the Hero, and he came early in the morning to help celebrate Prairie's 100th day of school for the 2006-2007 academic year.
First, he helped the kindergartners count, starting with one, but stopped them at nine.
"There was no 10!" Zero said, explaining that originally, he was nothing, but by pairing with other numbers, he was able to make those numbers bigger. "So, I became Zero the Hero."
Zero, played by fifth-grade teacher Rodney Rowe, wore a black cape and a mask in the shape of "100" for the occasion. He guided the students in the "Zero the Hero Stomp," leading a musical count to 100 punctuated by stomping at every multiple of 10.
ADVERTISEMENT
Zero wasn't familiar to all the kindergartners, but Mary Appel's class has been receiving notes and little treats from him all year long, every 10th day of school. Usually, the treats are Life Savers or other items shaped like the numeral 0.
Zero has helped Appel's class learn to count, but he's also helped them with subtraction. Every few days, eager students want to know how long it will be before Zero stops by again, so Appel helps them subtract to find out.
Kindergartners are expected to learn to count to 100 by ones, twos, fives and 10s by the time they finish the year, and Zero has helped with that, too. Zero has also helped children understand the base-10 number system, in which a zero can be used as a placeholder in numbers like 10, 20 and 100.
Zero's visit wasn't the only part of the 100th day celebration for kindergartners.
In most classes, students counted out 100 items and brought them to school. In Appel's class, the items were treats, which were counted and then divided up for the students.
Appel's class also counted 100 steps away from their classroom to see how far they could get.
Appel's and Karen Skog's classes both searched for 100 chocolates hidden in their classrooms, matching the number written on the wrappers to a list of all the numbers from 1 to 100.
In Skog's class, students also had to write about what they would do if they had $100, write about something they would want 100 of, and also write about something they would definitely not want 100 of.
