Math4Kids (December 2018 – present)

Why don’t present mathematics applications to Grades 3–5 pupils using funny problem-solving activities and logical games laboratories? And why don’t do this by tutoring in a local community center, such as a public library?

This is how the idea of Math 4 Kids came into my mind right after the first KidsUniversity experience. Since December 2018, I’ve organized several meetings in the public library Biblioteca Fausto Sabeo in my origin town, Chiari, Italy. Usually, each meeting is dedicated to a particular subject related to mathematics and lasts about two hours on a Saturday morning. Participants are usually pupils attending different primary schools in Chiari or in neighboring towns, so they may not know each other before the meeting. Their number typically ranges from 10 to 20, depending on the fact if I am the only tutor there or if somebody else helps me manage them. As teaching methods, I implement collaborative learning, competitive learning, discovery learning, and of course games and puzzles.

Due to my regular work as a Ph.D. student in the past and as a postdoc now, and also because of COVID-19, in the recent years, I could not keep a regular schedule. But these appointments are not over! The enthusiasm shown by the participants has always been overwhelming, encouraging me to design and develop more and more activities.

Hereafter I listed all meetings, together with the topics faced, from the most recent to the oldest one:

• December 28, 2024 – Arithmetic and operations research: TBD.
• November 09, 2024 – In collaboration with Editoriale Scienza and Giovanni Macetti for the XXII edition of the Rassegna della Microeditoria – Problem-solving and Informatics: wooden puzzles, algorithm development, and a STEM memory game with associations.
• August 24, 2024 – Arithmetic, informatics, and operations research: an interdisciplinary Pentathlon of Problem-Solving (expressions, coding, graphs, shortest path, Traveling Salesman Problem, and minimum spanning tree).
• December 27, 2023 – Arithmetic: an innovative bingo and other Christmas games, riddles, and puzzles.
• November 04, 2023 – Growing with science, special event based on the books mentioned in the catalog “Crescere con la scienza” by Editoriale Scienza, addressed to Grades 1-6 students, at the XXI edition of the Rassegna della Microeditoria (counting and the role of zero, a science mime, sorting games, the 15 puzzle, and coding activities).
• August 05, 2023 – Operations research: the Olympiad of Problem-Solving (knapsack, graph coloring, and vertex cover).
• March 25, 2023 – Informatics: sorting games, Fibonacci and other sequences, and memory with fractal patterns.
• December 24, 2022 – Operations research and arithmetic: the Christmas (Knapsack) problem and an innovative bingo.
• January 05, 2022 – Arithmetic and logic: an innovative bingo (where operations or puzzles instead of numbers are extracted) and other Christmas games.
• December 29, 2020 – Operations research: the Traveling Santa Problem and other Christmas games, riddles, and puzzles.
• February 22, 2020 – Astronomy: Galileo Galilei, the scientific method, the telescope, the Moon, and the planets.
• December 21, 2019 – Operations research: the Traveling Santa Problem and other Christmas games, riddles, and puzzles.
• September 22, 2019 – Informatics: the Turing test.
• April 06, 2019 – Informatics and literature: recursion in nature, fractals, Fibonacci numbers, and recursion in poetry.
• March 02, 2019 – Cryptography: the Caesar Cipher and other secret languages.
• December 22, 2018 – Operations research: the Traveling Santa Problem, mazes and duality, and other Christmas games, riddles, and puzzles.