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Gina Lowry, a sixth-grade math teacher at Heritage Hall, recently walked into the school's locker room and found several football coaches tackling a mathematical brainteaser, with which they'd been wrestling for some time.

Lowry had the problem solved in three minutes. "It made them really mad,” she said, "but it was really funny!”

It wasn't that the coaches couldn't do the math. Rather, they had trouble setting up the problem to solve. Her students frequently make the same mistakes, Lowry said.

"Most of word problems are reading and understanding what the problem is telling you,” Lowry said.

"Kids today spend so much time using shorthand and texting on computers, cell phones and video games that they're impatient,” she said. When she assigns word problems, Lowry requires her students to write the answers in complete sentences.

Lowry and other experts say parents can help bring out the financial wizards in their children. Among other things, they can start paying allowances early, expose their kids to chess and teach real-world finances.

"As soon as your youngster can understand the transaction involved in buying a lollipop, the child is ready to start learning about money,” said Sue Lynn Sasser, executive director of the Oklahoma Council on Executive Education. Children, Sasser said, learn most from watching their parents, whether it's comparison shopping or computing the price per pound on goods.

Sasser recommends parents begin paying their children, at age 6 or 7, a weekly allowance.

"Generally, it's easier to start saving when they have a specific goal, like a new bike,” Sasser said. "If you continue to dole out money to your child, he won't learn how to make decisions about how and for what the money is spent.”

One way to get children thinking about money is to introduce them to chess.

"Many of the same lessons learned in playing the game can be applied to finances,” said Debby Stapleton, who's helped teach the Chess Club at Chisholm Elementary School in Edmond.

Among other things, players learn the future effects of their moves, how to sacrifice to gain a better position, planning and anticipation, Stapleton said. At one point, nearly one-sixth of the school — or 110 second-graders through fifth-graders — were in the club.

Stapleton was 9 when her father bought a chess set and book, and decided the whole family, including five children, needed to learn to play chess. "We had a blast,” she said. Her greatest lesson learned was patience, she said.

Stapleton and her husband, a math professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, now have taught their three children children, ages 7 to 15, to play. A high school cheerleader, their daughter sometimes cleans up at school chess tournaments.

"She totally blows away the chess player stereotype,” Stapleton said. "A boy opponent once told her, ‘Yeah, we thought you'd be an easy win, and when you beat us, we were shocked.'”

"I see girls develop a huge confidence after realizing they cannot only learn to play chess but be really good at it, too,” Stapleton said. "The boys seem to already realize they can learn to play.”