[MamaTexan]

You can’t teach algebraic principles to,kids who are still learning basic math.

No, but you can so frustrate them trying to 'teach' them this intellectual swill to the point they no longer even TRY or WANT to learn....they just do what they're told.

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My twins graduated a few years back, and when they were in elementary school they were given some asinine homework with addition and subtraction by grouping into tens. I called the teacher at home to discover it was a backasswards way of what we called 'borrowing'- (but then, we spent a solid year just adding and subtracting different amounts with various-sized groups of numbers)

It was shortly afterward I discovered the lessons hopped back and forth in mathematical principals to the point they made little sense.

Kids in todays *educational* system no longer suffer through the angst of having to recite multiplication tables until they puke like their parents did.

[RightField]

When each of my kids turned 3, I hung a multiplication table (one that went all the way up to 12x12) in their room. I got it from a teacher supply store. I never mentioned it or asked them to look at it.

Years later, when it came time to learn multiplication, wonder of wonders, they had already memorized not only the chart, but lots of relationships between the numbers as well.