Engaging children with science, the INFN Kids project

INFN Kids is a science education project of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics addressed to young people of Primary and Middle schools age. The initiative aims at raising children’s curiosity towards science with a focus on Physics, inspiring them with science by illustrating the different research fields that INFN is pursuing, the development in technologies along with the applications in everyday life and presenting people who animate science. It gathers technicians and researchers of thirteen units and National labs in the design and realization of multimedia products, laboratory-based activities, comics, science demos and exhibits. The activities are conducted online and in person in schools, science festivals and at INFN’s sites. The adopted methodologies and the didactic tools (lectures, interactive lessons, hands-on sessions, science games) involve children in the direct exploration of natural phenomena. Given the manifold plan of activities the recipients of the project are also teachers and families, and this allowed to expand and use different formats to meet the audience’s requests. We here present an overview of the ongoing initiatives to share our experiences and we illustrate in particular the comics centered on the characters Leo and Alice that drive children in the investigation of the micro and macro world, and the laboratory-based activities designed to introduce kids some fundamental concepts related to matter and its inner structure.