By Jeanette Shakalli

Irene Vasquez who lives in the province of Veraguas in the Republic of Panama started attending FUNDAPROMAT’s virtual events when she was 11 years old. She even celebrated her 12th-birthday at one of our Webinars on Recreational Mathematics where she learned about math in archeology. Now that Irene is 13 years old, she continues attending the Foundation’s events, including our Math Jamborees, which take place every Saturday at 10 am Panama time. We asked Irene about her favorite Math Jamboree and this is what she said: “My favorite activity is Broken Calculator since I have to think about several different ways to find the solution to each challenge, but I enjoy all the Math Jamborees to the fullest.”

Math meets fun when playing games such as SET, Sprouts, Tangram, Sudoku and KenKen. Even though there are many math resources in English for games such as these, there do not seem to be enough in other languages. In particular, math teachers in Spanish-speaking countries are constantly looking for ways to connect with their students. For this reason, the Panamanian Foundation for the Promotion of Mathematics (FUNDAPROMAT) has a section dedicated to “Teaching Resources” on their website fundapromat.org so that math teachers can download this material in Spanish. In this blog post I’m going to tell you about some of the activities FUNDAPROMAT has in Spanish for individuals, children, families, or any group.

Our Math Jamborees are interactive virtual events for the entire family. Participants separate into groups depending on whether they are kids or adults and explore an exciting math activity in an environment of collaboration and a lot of fun. Kids as young as four years old attend these weekly virtual events. So far we have organized 52 Math Jamborees and all the activities that we have explored are available on our website to download in Spanish. It has been a heartwarming experience to build an international community that is interested in discovering the richness and beauty of mathematics with us.

Among our teaching resources, you may also access our Virtual Escape Room, which is available in Spanish and in English. Will you be able to solve the ten hidden puzzles and escape the enchanted mansion? The puzzles are inspired by the activities that we have explored in our Math Jamborees. The challenges of this activity can be solved individually or in groups. 

In our Math Almanac in Spanish, you can find one math challenge every day of the year 2022. Moreover, every month we highlight a woman who has left a mark in the history of mathematics. The entire Math Almanac was launched on February 11th, 2022 to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Thanks to the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of Panama, we plan for our new magazine “Factorial” to reach more than 5,000 families in Panama. We will launch the magazine in both digital and physical formats in the next few months, and it will be available to everyone on our website.

As a result of our trips to visit schools outside of Panama City, several math teachers have asked us to create flyers with fun math activities in different topics. This is how the Geometry Flyer and the Flyer for Preschool were born. These teaching resources are also available to download. We plan to create more of these flyers in Spanish since they have been quite a success among our teaching community.

If you would like to volunteer to create new resources for mathematical activities in Spanish, please contact us at info@fundapromat.org.

MAA member Jeanette Shakalli is the Executive Director of FUNDAPROMAT and the International Mathematical Union (IMU)’s Committee for Women in Mathematics (CWM) Ambassador for Panama.