Need Help Understanding Product attributes and SKUs

Hello,

We have a product with multiple variations.  Each variation has its own SKU.  We want to have a "parent" product and then have a drop-down list of product attributes of different sizes that each link to the different SKUs when in the cart.

So far I have created the new "parent" product.  I have then created product attributes for the different sizes.  In the product info admin page, in the product attributes tab, I associated the multiple variations with the corresponding attributes.

This creates a nice drop down of all of the different sizes.  The only problem is on the product listing page it says $0.00 and also when you add the product to your cart, the SKU number is not being displayed.  I have enabled the SKU's to show in the admin settings.

I also tried grouping the products under that "parent" product that I created.  We like the look of the product listing page because it says "from $39.99" instead of "$0.00" like it says when they are all simple products.  When I selected one of the options from the drop-down menu while grouped, it gives me the error message of cannot add grouped items to cart.

Is there a way to get the product listing page to look like how it does when the items are grouped while retaining the functionality of the simple product detail page? Also, why aren't the SKU's showing up in the cart?

Any help is much appreciated!
Thank you!

Note that product attribute combinations can have SKUs.
(although I don't know if they address any of your other display issues)

if you have created the group product and associated all simple product to it and on group product detail page if you are trying to add product to cart then it will not work as group product can not be added to cart. it just used to group all the simple products.
you can use product attribute combination on simple products it self to add item to cart.
also as you said price will show 0.00 if you don't set the price of simple product it self so when you select size it will show the price of appropriate size.

so you can set default price to that simple product.
I am not sure about SKU not showing on cart stuff.