If you have a grandma around, ask if she remembers when we didn't try teaching babies to swim or little kids to learn a foreign language. It turns out to be the same with Algebra.

For Focus, the magazine of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Carol Greene, Professor of Math Education of Boston University, recaps for us recent research showing that the key concepts of algebra are easily accepted if the kids are young enough. She identifies these key concepts as follows: 1) Variables; 2) Patterns and Functions; and 3) Proportion.

Even first graders did well with the following example. The teacher shows a picture of two identical toy cars. She says each one costs a dollar and together the cost is two dollars. Then she shows a picture of the same toy car and a toy dog. She says together they cost five dollars. She asks if anyone knows how much the toy dog costs.

Another example the little ones did well with falls in the second area, patterns and functions. The teacher shows a picture of two squares, one on top of the other. This is followed by picture increasing the number of squares on the bottom by one each time from one to two to three to four and so on. Children are asked to guess and describe the next example in the series.

The third concept, she points out, is closely related to multiplying. In a study done with kids in grades 1-3, they actually liked the mystery of solving for an unknown and had very little trouble.

In other studies, she sees similar results coming from Grades 4-6. Because there are such strong connections to algebraic thinking from simple arithmetic and measurement, young kids seem to take the concepts in stride. If you have a minute, check out http://www.enc.org/focus/k5algebra to see how this works in the classroom...it's fun.

For a couple of great activities you can play with at home, see http://standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/chap4/4.1/ and http://illuminations.nctm.org/mathlets/shapebalance/index.html