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by robbrown451 2363 days ago
That's an interesting point. I still prefer zero on the right (and remember, they'll see them laid out that way in lots of other contexts, such as preschool worksheets).

I was going to suggest they add a feature to make it accept numbers entered via the the keyboard, but I figured I should check first if they've already done so. They did. :)

2 comments

Sure, but you wouldn't teach them the alphabet starting with 'q'.

The list on the index page starts with 0, if nothing else it would be more consistent to start the counting section with 0 as well (FWIW I agree with the OP, I'm teaching my toddler to count starting with 0).

I'm the OP, and if by counting from 0 you mean "how many apples are there? Let's count 0, 1, 2, 3", then that's not what I meant and not an educational approach I necessarily agree with.

All I meant was what I said: If you're presenting numbers according to "numeric order, but with a weird exception due to the history of typewriters, which BTW your children have never heard of", then it would be simpler to remove that one weird exception. Or, to put it simpler: 0 is less than 1.

Wait I'm confused. You are teaching them to count the first item as "zero"? So if there are 3 apples, you have them say "zero, one, two"?

(FYI, I wasn't defending the zero on the right decision, I would prefer zero on the left)

> So if there are 3 apples, you have them say "zero, one, two"?

Well yes, except they'd count to three still because they're starting on 0 and increase that with each apple.

Preschool worksheets have pictures of computer keyboards on them? Why would they list the numbers from 0 to 9 with 0 on the right? Do you have an example of what you mean?