Odyssey 2008

WOW WOW WOW WOW ! Today was Emily's Odyssey of the Mind competition.....Odyssey is a creative problem solving program for kids in elementary school to high school. Emily has competed on a team from school for the past three years. This year another brave mom and I decided we would try out coaching our girls and 4 other friends from school. We are coaches in a completely hands off manner...the kids are required to make write and create everything for the competition on their own. They were competing in the Technical problem this year called DinoStories, they were to come up with and present an eight minute creative and humorous performance on how the dinosaurs could have become extinct. This was their first year competing in the more challenging technical problem, which required building and presenting this theory in a technical way. We were lucky to have two very technically minded likely future MIT Grads and engineers who did most of the technical designs and building on our team Cody and JC. The girls wrote a wonderful funny story about the dinosaur competing in an Olympic type games where a bowling ball breaks the tectonic plates causing the dinosaurs fall through and turn into fossils.


Checking in before their performance....

The outline of the problem to be solved is broad to encourage creativity, but there are several themes and items that must be included by each team. They were to include an actual dinosaur in a character and a replica and an animal that survives the extinction.

Onstage........

They have been working about two days a week since December building, gluing, writing and practicing....and going through a crazy amount of duct tape! This year they moved up a division competing in the 6, 7 and 8 grade division, they were the only team of 6th graders. The competition has three parts, the Long Term Performance, Overall Style and Spontaneous where they compete in a fast paced quick draw type competition that they don't find out about until competition day.

WELL..............................They took 3rd place over all out of 8 teams and FIRST PLACE in their Long Term Performance, qualifying them to compete in the state competition in Tucson in April. Did I mention they were the youngest in the division!!?!?!?!?

Showing off the trophy!!!!!















They have worked so hard and I am so proud of them, coaching them has been so much fun! We need to brush up on our Spontaneous skills before State but today was a blast!

Wish us luck in Tucson!!!!!