We present a design study developed in an Italian school. Taking inspiration from the work of the Russian psychologist V. V. Davydov, we have reformulated some activities of his curriculum for the first grade, in order to adapt them to a didactic project for a fifth grade class. In the paper we firstly expose our theoretical assumptions and the hypotheses that stand at the roots of the project. Then, after a brief description of the entire educational path, we present some excerpts of it in order to analyse the processes by which the pupils give sense to algebraic language. Finally we argue that Davydov's ideas anticipate the claims of Early Algebra, nowadays very popular within the research community.