[tpurves]

Can confirm! Have a first grader and she actually found learning basic adding/subtraction, and now multiplication more fun by learning it through games played with implicit basic algebra. “I am thinking of a mysetry number, can you guess it? X marks the soot where the number goes... I’ll give you a clue 2 plus x equals 4. Or 9 times x equals 18.” Etc. She’ll laugh and play this game all day, and make up algebra puzzles for us too. Great way to learn her basic math and implicitly algebra too through play rather than by rote, or the plodding pace of the grade school system.

[philwelch]

Heh, this reminds me of a fond story. My eighth grade algebra teacher (who did seem to genuinely love math) once said that mathematics was a game invented by man. I didn’t appreciate this at the time but I wish this was the mentality.

IMO the US math curriculum now is designed to train kids to become pre-PC-era clerks (who only need basic, manual arithmetic) rather than engineers.