Science centres: a resource for school and community. Miranda Pilo Alfonso Mantero Department of Physics-University of Genoa In Genoa about ten years ago a science centre for children has been set up in a building where also a kindergarten is hosted. The centre was under the jurisdiction of the Municipality of Genoa and, through an agreement, the Municipality has committed its scientific responsibility and management to the Department of Physics (University of Genoa). The Centre, called "Idee e materie in gioco" (IMG), that is "Playing with materials and ideas", has hosted exhibitions, training courses, events for children and families and it is one of the locations for Festival of Science, the most important science event in Italy. Science researchers, teachers and young people (biologists, engineers, physicist, science journalists) are involved in designing scientific paths, games, experiments available at different school levels. Special care has been devoted to kindergarten level and now the institution is considered a Centre of excellence for age 0-6 years and is a feather in Municipality’s cap. The Centre has been visited also by foreign researchers, coming from Europe, USA and South America. The main purpose of the Centre is to solicit curiosity and interest towards the scientific aspects of life, in the meanwhile amusing the users. Pupils and students come with their teachers and choose one or two paths to focus their attention. Scientific explainers (with a special training) guide pupils and students along the chosen path(s), posing questions in order to stimulate observations, reflections and critical thinking. Teachers develop in classroom the scientific concepts involved in experiments and games; after some time, the same path(s) can be again run with another point of view and a deeper investigation of the experiment/event/phenomenon can be done. The Centre is used also for pre-service and in-service teachers' training. Some graduation theses have been carried out on its experiments and games. Annex to the Centre is the "squared garden": a green area shared in squares, where couple of children can collect samples and grow some fine herbs, common in Mediterranean diet, used in preparing food in the school kitchen. In this way there is a continuum inside-outside for sceince education: outside children begin to learn something about local vegetations, appreciate environment; inside, in the Centre they have opportunity to make reflections, discussions and careful observations on their samples using also a microscope connected with a

Methodolgy in the Centre is based on Constructivism: visitors are guided to observe experiments, to play games and to answer proper questions (stimulating creativity) posed by explainers. It is a method that teachers are stimulated to use. To this purpose many teachers' training courses are carried out in the Centre.

A friendly approach to science can develop curiosity and interest towards scientific topics and may raise criticism especially towards media information. The Centre may be implemented for teachers' training.