The "Early Years Generalizing Project" ("EYGP") involves Australian years 1 to 4 (age 5 to 9) students and investigates how they grasp and express generalizations. This paper focuses on data collected from 6 Year 1 students in an exploratory study within a clinical interview setting that required students to identify function rules. Preliminary findings suggest that the use of gestures (both by students and interviewers), self-talk (by students), and concrete acting out, assisted students to reach generalizations and to begin to express these generalities. It also appears that as students became aware of the structure, their use of gestures and self-talk tended to decrease. [This document was originally published as Warren, E., Miller, J., & Cooper, T. J. (2012). Exploring young students' functional thinking. In B. Ubuz (Ed.), "Proceedings of the 35th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education" (Vol. 4, p. 329-336). Ankara, Turkey: PME.]