(a song about zero)
With an accompanying video in a picture-book style, this song introduces zero through many different words such as blank, nothing, empty, nought and, nil, each paired with a distinct visual representation to anchor them. The aim is for children to see zero as a unified concept and quantity with a place on the number line. The do-re-mi style song loops around again to show the idea of zero as a starting point or beginning, and its circularity – except in the second time around, all the concepts can also be named zero!
This is a bespoke video made to help illustrate the mathematical ideas in the song. It also contains a picture-in-picture view of one of our team demonstrating the gestures in the song.
This is a close-up video of one of our team demonstrating the gestures for the song.
This is a recording of both the instrumental and the vocal parts of the song so you can learn it, or to sing along to.
This is a recording of the instrumental parts of the song so you can sing along. It doesn’t have any vocals apart from backing vocals.
This is the music for the song (vocal line and backing) written out on the stave. We have included chords so that instruments like the guitar can be used. The music may be slightly simplified in parts to help with ease of playing.
This is the lyrics for the song written out in verses and choruses for ease of learning.
This is some background on the mathematics and vocabulary in the song and our suggestions as to how to use it in the classroom and at home to help bring out the mathematics. There are suggested activities to enrich some of the ideas from the song.
© 2026 Tappy Math(s) project.
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Licence: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence.