We present the “AggiornaMenti” project, a laboratory-based course for Italian middle-school science teachers delivered by INFN researchers within a national collaboration. The project,launched in 2017, has so far reached about 800 teachers, who received a professional training on a hands-on approach to the teaching of science according to the most advanced educational methodologies. At the end of the course the participants should be able to guide their young students to discover the laws of Nature starting from simple experiments, which can be performed anywhere with cheap materials easily found also at home. During these last years educational resources like videoclips and worksheets have also been produced. Each year the impact of the project is evaluated through a national feedback questionnaire. Results show that our methodology is appreciated by most teachers, who tend to implement the new “learning by doing” approach
during their lectures at school.