Mathematical Kangaroo (German: Känguru der Mathematik) is an international mathematics competition in over 77 countries with over 6 million participants. The competition is held annually on the third Thursday of March and consists of problems in multiple-choice form that are not-standard notebook problems and come from a variety of topics. Besides basic computational skills, they require inspiring ideas, perseverance, creativity and imagination, logical thinking, and other problem-solving strategies. Often there are small stories, intriguing problems, and surprising results, which encourage discussions with friends and family – all intended to whet students’ appetite for mathematics and support mathematical education in schools.

In Germany, the competition is prepared and evaluated centrally by the non-profit association Mathematikwettbewerb Känguru e.V., which is based at Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2019, almost 1 million students participated across Germany.

WMIS is participating in the competition for the first time this year. The Friends of WMIS are supporting the initiative and fund the 2€ fee for all of our 3rd and 4th graders. It is an individual competition in which 24 tasks each in grades 3/4 are to be solved in 75 minutes. It will be administered via the maths teachers for each class. They will share more information with their classes respectively.

There is a training app for various devices as well as supporting books and literature. On the German website, there are also English-language test forms from previous years available.