programme for age 8 - 12
go solve!
in 2026
Workshop 1
26 - 31 May, 2026
Tiling Aztec Diamonds | Trigonometry, Precalculus, and Calculus | Topology and Euler Characteristic | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
This exciting workshop will be a hands-on week that brings together the fundamental mathematical topics of trigonometry, precalculus, and calculus with creativity, tiling, and art! This very unique workshop starts with students tiling a chessboard to learn first hand about proofs that rely on mathematical induction. Students will then work on various examples of induction and fundamental ideas of combinatorics. They will then practice visualization skills with trigonometry and precalculus, as well as how to find equations that describe a mystery shape. Using the Desmos tool, they will make Desmos art and see intuitive visual solutions to a bunch of calculus problems! Learners will thereafter be introduced to ideas of topology, surfaces like tori and klein bottles, and mobius bands. Students will work towards defining the Euler characteristic and draw planar graphs on various surfaces. The workshop will end with students displaying and explaining the Aztec diamond tilings, models of topological surfaces, and Desmos art that they created, on stage!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 2
6 - 11 July, 2026
Complex numbers & visualizing fractals | Quaternions & Rotations | Graph Theory & the Four Color Theorem | Platonic Solids and Tilings | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
During a highly stimulating week, students get a geometric introduction to arithmetic over complex numbers and are introduced to definitions of fractals such as the Mandelbrot set and Julia set. This would include a hands-on exploration, where students would generate and explore these fractals themselves. They would tweak the parameters defining these fractals to discover their own and make conjectures about them. Students will also learn about quaternions, developing the strong link between quaternions and three-dimensional rigid rotations! Students will further learn about Archimedean solids and build their own examples of Archimedean solids, talking about the unique tilings of the plane by hexagons, triangles, and squares, and try to relate these to the Platonic/Archimedean solids as tilings of the sphere. They will work together on hyperbolic tiling, working in teams to compete. On the last day, students will present their results!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 3
13 - 18 July, 2026
Counting Problems and Pascal’s Triangle | Partition Theory | Nim and Snippenrope game | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
Students will be introduced to the fascinating world of combinatorics. They will work on counting problems and sequences leading to defining exponents and the Pascal’s Triangle. Students will also focus on enumerative questions about partitions of small sets. This will motivate the definition of ‘young diagrams’ and will examine a few instances in mathematics where these diagrams show up and are useful as well as work on restricted partition problems. The week will also include a problem session where students will be presented with competition problems that will require them to think creatively about how to use partitions. To round up, students will play combinatorial games that will encourage students to make their own conjectures. On the last day, students will present their results!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 4
24 - 29 August, 2026
RSA Encryption and Cryptography | Scissors congruence in 2D | Magic Squares and Symmetry | Combinatorial information theory | Recursion, Algorithmic Reasoning and Mathematical Visualization | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
As an invigorating preparation to return to school, students will explore the mathematics behind one of the most important ideas in modern computer security: RSA encryption. They will learn ‘modulo n’, modern cryptography and use mathematics to make secret communication! They will then discover scissors congruence in 2D and 3D, the latter being an important and surprising result that introduced what is now known as the Dehn invariant. Through this, students will learn fundamental properties of shapes, including formulas for area, relationships between sides and angles, and the Pythagorean theorem. They will then explore magic squares! Magic squares have fascinated mathematicians for over two thousand years, appearing in ancient Chinese, Indian, and Islamic mathematics, and later inspiring artists such as Albrecht Dürer in Renaissance Europe. Students will explore the mathematical beauty and structure underlying magic squares and through this process, students will develop reasoning skills related to combinatorics, arithmetic sequences, and geometric symmetry. Hands-on exercises such as filling in grids, rotating and reflecting completed squares, and comparing constructions will encourage creative problem solving and mathematical curiosity. Finally, students will play a combinatorial information theory puzzle. Through experimentation, they will discover how to encode and transmit information efficiently, learning about binary representations, the concept of information encoding, and basic ideas from game theory and combinatorics. Through mathematical puzzles, they will then learn about recursion, algorithmic reasoning and mathematical visualization. On the last day, students will collaborate and present their learnings!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 5
12 - 17 October, 2026
Hamiltonian circuits and Eulerian circuits | Taxicab geometry | Pick’s Theorem | Voronoi diagrams | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
Students will thrive in this exciting winter week learning through games about Hamiltonian circuits and Eulerian circuits. They will try to deduce properties which guarantee or prohibit the existence of these special circuits. Students will then explore ‘Taxicab geometry’ through challenging activities. They will learn about Pick’s Theorem and enjoy a hands-on exploration of the relationship between area, perimeter, number of boundary pegs, and number of interior pegs of rectangles, triangles, convex polygons and more. They will then learn about the Voronoi diagram. Applied in linguistics, hydrology, astrophysics, epidemiology, and machine learning, to name a few, Voronoi diagrams are an essential aspect of combinatorial geometry. The focus will be on figuring out an algorithm for precisely determining a Voronoi diagram. Students will then present their learnings on stage!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 6
14 - 19 December, 2026
Modular arithmetic | Cryptography | Stars and cyclic groups | Permutation | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
Go Solvers will close the year with a thrilling week of modular arithmetic, a foundational tool in classical number theory. They will learn a couple of mathematical magic tricks, which hinge on modular arithmetic. Codes have shown up in writing for hundreds of years. It is not surprising being able to send a message, which only your receiver can read. One of the fundamental ways of sending information is via RSA encryption, which relies on modular arithmetic! Students will dive into how RSA works and then send some messages of their own. They will then dive into an activity to discover fundamental ways to think about divisibility and some interesting parallels to modular arithmetic. Students will then charge forward and explore group theory and see how they can recast stars and modular arithmetic as cyclic groups. A fundamental result in group theory is that every finite group is a subgroup of a permutation group. Over the course of the class, they will make sense of that statement, exploring subgroups and the permutation group on 3 elements. Students will end their year with a powerful presentation of their discoveries!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes
Workshop 7
5 - 10 April, 2027
Recursion | Catalan numbers | Tree traversals | Competition math
Location: HP Gaming Garage, DTEC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai, UAE
Time: 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Age: 8 - 12 years
The Go Solve! Programme 2026 starts with an intriguing and exciting challenge for which students will learn to find a winning strategy using advanced mathematics! Students will then learn about Catalan numbers, arguably the most important numbers in algebraic combinatorics. In fact, Richard Stanley, acclaimed algebraic combinatorialist and emeritus professor at MIT, has published a book dedicated to Catalan numbers. In it, he describes 214 different combinatorial objects counted by the Catalan numbers. Students will use their study of Catalan numbers as a starting point for discussing some recent results in algebraic combinatorics and the current state of this fascinating mathematical field. Students will then learn about trees, a fundamental data structure in computer science. They will examine different algorithms for traversing trees and compare their runtimes and worst case scenarios. On the last day, students will present their breakthrough findings!
Workshop fee: AED 2,500 + taxes