Odyssey of the Mind

Last school year our school started participating in Odyssey of the Mind (similar to Destination Imagination I believe). Anyhoo... basically the kids get in a group and have some sort of project they take on. They have an adult supervisor, but the kids really have to come up with the ideas how to do the project.

We decided to let Mary and Alex give it a whirl... At first it was just an occasional meeting, no big deal.

Then it turned into meetings once a week, then twice a week, and at the end I think 3 times a week...

Alex wasn't exactly a great team player for a lot of the time. He'd daydream or wander around the classroom. His group met in the kindergarten classroom so Adam and I would wait there so Adam could play with the toys. Unfortunately, that made Alex also want to come play with the toys. His team had to do the "Money Maker" project. It was a skit about someone trying to come up with an invention. The first 3 would fail and then the last one would be great. They came up with things like an airplane that would shrink when you took off and get big when it landed, which failed. There was a candy and toy maker, but it got jammed. Then there was some sort of remote control, but I don't remember what it did. Alex and some other excited potential buyer got to break that by fighting over it. The last one was a robot that would do ANYTHING!! Some poor kid had to wear a cardboard box wrapped in foil. Despite all Alex's reluctance to participate, he learned his lines very well and had great stage presence. The judges commented on his enthusiasm, and you certainly didn't have trouble hearing him like some other kids, even middle school kids I saw perform.

Mary's group had to make up a tour. Theirs frankly got out of control because they were touring Disneyland, Bikini Bottom, and a few other places. Mary originally was supposed to be a gingerbread girl, then Cleopatra, and someone else. Fortunately, they did a bit of a rewrite towards the end and she only had to be a gingerbread girl. Costume changes were impossible so I was glad about that. She probably would have preferred to be Cleopatra or something though since being a gingerbread girl just means you get to wear a lot of brown... BORING! Unfortunately, Mary got a horrid case of stage fright and wouldn't say a word.

Each group also had to do some sort of spontaneous project too that the parents and adult leaders couldn't even go into. They were even sworn to secrecy. I thought I'd get the kids to fess up after we got home, but they didn't.

The kindergarten and first grade kids got medals and little rubber ducks. Older gets were not so lucky, although Mary also got a little pink pig for being a sibling of a kindergartener. Adam got something too but promptly lost it.

It was a very long day in a town an hour or so away from here, but it was fun. I'm not sure if the kids want to do it again, but it was a good experience for them.