I Built a Math Helper for my 5th Grader

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Weekend Challenge: Build for a Friend

What I Built

My 5th grader needs some help with math. I wanted to build a simple app to take a homework problem she was struggling with and create a few additional sample problems that exercise the same concept but with different values.

Demo

Code

jimulle / math_homework_helper

My 5th grader needs some help with math. I wanted to build a simple app to take a homework problem she was struggling with and create a few additional sample problems that exercise the same concept but with different values.

Math Practice Generator

A tiny local web app for generating practice variants of a 5th-grade math problem Type in a problem your kid got stuck on, and a local Gemma model (via Ollama) will generate new problems that test the same skill at the same difficulty, with different numbers — so your kid can practice without having memorized the answer.

Runs 100% locally. No internet connection needed once set up.

One-time setup

Already done for you in this session:

1. Installed Ollama via Homebrew and started it as a background service (brew services start ollama).
2. Pulled the gemma3:4b model (ollama pull gemma3:4b).

If you ever reinstall or move this to another machine:

brew install ollama
brew services start ollama
ollama pull gemma3:4b

Running the app

./run.sh

This creates a Python virtual environment (first run only), installs dependencies, and starts the app at http://127.0.0.1:5050.

Open that URL…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

I leveraged Claude code to help with development (my usual tool) but the app itself relies on Gemma via Ollama to generate the problem variants.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

This project not only afforded me personally the opportunity to try out open source models and local first AI, it allowed me to create an app that can support my daughter's learning journey without the need for wifi (that's a parenting win to me).

Prize Categories

Gemma: I leveraged the Gemma model and after basic testing received comparable results to using a flagship non-local model