Math through curiosity · From rural Mexico, for the world
Colibrí turns every child’s curiosity about their world into the reason to learn to use math. It works offline, on their family’s phone. It starts in Mexico and is built for any rural community in the world.
How many stars are there? Tap the sky to count them.
Chapter one · Her
Imagine a nine-year-old girl. She lives in a village, among hills and cornfields. At night, her mother lends her the phone. She can count, and she can do some sums. But ask her how many buckets of water the cornfield needs, and she doesn’t know where to start.
The problem
In Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, 7 out of 10 children could not solve a two-step word problem at a 4th-grade level.
They can do sums. The hard part is using them to solve a real problem.
Independent Learning Measurement (MIA), Universidad Veracruzana, 2019. In Veracruz (2017), 74% of 5th graders could not solve the math problems.
Three schools
The smaller and more remote the community, the fewer adults there are to teach, and the more grades share one classroom.
4 out of 10 primary schools are multigrade: one teacher teaches several grades at once.
General primary
76,431 schools
Most of the country’s children study here. In the countryside, many are multigrade too.
Indigenous primary
10,344 schools
For children from Indigenous peoples, taught in their language and in Spanish. Many teachers cover several grades in one room.
Community primary · CONAFE
9,674 schools
In the smallest villages: about 11 children in a single room. They are taught by a Community Education Leader aged 16 to 29, with at least lower-secondary school, all grades at once.
The gap
Schools, students and teachers: SEP, Main Figures of the National Education System 2023-2024. PLANEA 2018 Level I as reported in SEP’s National Inclusive Education Strategy. Multigrade: Mejoredu, 2022-2023 school year. Each dot is 10 students per school.
Not only Mexico
7 out of 10ten-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text.
8 out of 10in Latin America and the Caribbean, the region hit hardest after the pandemic.
4 out of 10people in the world do not get an education in a language they speak or understand.
Made in Mexico. Built to travel.
World Bank, UNICEF and UNESCO, The State of Global Learning Poverty, 2022 · UNESCO GEM, Languages matter, 2025 · UNESCO UIS, 2017: 617 million children and adolescents are not reaching minimum levels in reading and math · MIT Solve: over 270 million children out of school, and 1 in 5 teachers below their country’s minimum qualification.
A borrowed phone
97.3%of internet users in Mexico go online with a mobile phone.
79.3%of mobile users are prepaid only. Every megabyte costs credit.
64.4%have no internet at home in Indigenous localities. 20.4% have no mobile phone.
Colibrí works offline.Download it once. A session weighs a few kilobytes.
INEGI, ENDUTIH 2025 · ATDT Sector Program 2025-2030 (ENDUTIH 2024 data).
The idea
The family harvested corn. How many cobs are there?
First, by hand: group them in tens.
Then draw them: each sack of 10 becomes a bar.
Finally, the number.
We teach operations inside real problems from their own world: the cornfield, the stars, the rain, the market.
Ten minutes
A narrated, animated scene: the cornfield is thirsty. How many buckets does it need?
Drag buckets and group them in tens. Concrete comes before abstract.
Every wrong answer maps to a known misconception. Instead of a red cross, the child sees “Not yet” and a hint.
Two questions from earlier skills, just in time to keep them from fading.
The child picks the reason out of three. No writing, no talking: critical thinking in one tap.
A mystery for the next story and a challenge to do at home with the family.
Try it
Pick an answer and tap Check. The wrong options are not random: each one matches a confusion the teacher can work on.
3 sacks of 10 corncobs and 4 loose ones. How many in all?
The adults who are already there
At most 3 cards a week. Each one says which children are stuck, why the error happens, and a 5-minute activity with bottle caps or corn kernels. Never used to evaluate the teacher.
Zero effort. One reminder a day at the hour they choose, and a 15-second voice summary every week. If they like, one tap to say “I’m proud of you”.
The same lessons print as worksheets and teacher cards. The block colours stay distinct in black and white too.
What we don’t do
You against yourself.The fun comes from progress and mystery. We celebrate only when a skill is mastered.
How it grows
Estimated figures from the system design.
Our mission
Starting with Mexico: that every child in a rural community can use math to solve the problems of their own world.
Our vision
Wherever in the world a child learns far from a trained teacher, that their curiosity carries them from numbers to science, reading and critical thinking. In their own language, offline, with the adults who are already there.
Where we are
Colibrí can’t do it alone. We are looking for the people who already work for rural children.
Colibrí opens in the browser of a phone or of the classroom computers. Open it once with internet: after that it works offline.