Been pondering lately: DD-almost-6 is obsessed with Beast Academy. She is totally not "ready", but she loves the monsters and keeps bugging me to read even though I know she's zoning out on much of the math. But it finally occurred to me -- she IS learning math. Terms are becoming familiar, ideas are making partial sense, and she's easing her way in to understanding.
We take it for granted for most subjects -- language arts, topical knowledge, etc. -- that early immersion and accidental exposure in a rich environment matters. We don't wait for targeted instruction when the child is "ready."
Why not with math? Why do we (collectively, as a culture, not neccessarily parents on this board) withhold it until the day the kid is deemed ready, and then say, "Here are exponents, understand them now or else"?
Oh, and when Beast Academy was covering proto-algebra, DD said "Hey, that's like DragonBox!" and we had to scamper off and play a little DragonBox. I'd been dubious about DragonBox, since it's not really teaching algebra, it's just teaching a set of rules for manipulating. But my opinion of it just shot up. DragonBox is giving them a sense of familiarity and comfort-level and ownership of algebra-world. That can only be a good thing when they start doing algebra for real.
