Destination Imagination

The kids and I have been busy since October with Destination Imagination. I co-coach a team of seven kids including Isaac and Adam. DI is all about kids of all ages working together to problem solve, use their creativity and imaginations to come up with a solution to a challenge. This year, the challenge they chose is called "ViDIo Lit Hits." Their challenge was to take a piece of literature and make it into a music video to dramatically retell the story. The kids do ALL the work themselves without any adult help!
Our team chose Hansel & Gretel. They made scenery, a gingerbread house, had a teammate play all the music on a keyboard, rewrote lyrics to four songs to tell the story and had an oven bubble over when the witch (Isaac) was pushed in. They had to incorporate a "technical method" into their skit which was the bubbling -- baking soda and vinegar. The audience oooohed and ahhhhed!

My favorite song is the Imperial March from Star Wars. This is the song Isaac sings when he (the witch) sees Hansel and Gretel. The team worked soooo hard and recently at the regional competition they got 1st place out of 12 teams in their division!!! They will compete at the state competition on April 18th. If they receive 1st or 2nd there, they will qualify for globals which is in Nashville!!! Here are some pictures of the team...

Here is Adam as one of the trees in the forest and a background singer. Notice the great forest the kids painted! They built two structures out of PVC pipe to hold the background.

Here are Hansel and Gretel in front of the gingerbread house. The kids have been collecting more food to add to it. So far they're going to add Peeps and McDonalds french fries. Yum!

There's Isaac singing the Imperial March ... "I am the witch I will eat you all! Dinner, dessert; I will fatten you up! I am the boss you're the cocktail sauce!" This is inside the gingerbread house. They've decided to decorate it for the state competition using healthy foods -- that's what they think the evil witch would use to decorate his house... You know those evil foods like raisins, peanuts, brocolli. Like I said earlier, the kids make all the decisions!!!


Here the kids are singing and dancing the final song: Celebration. They're singing: "Celebrate the witch is dead!" They did their own choreography! It was so cute!

"We're going to State!!! We all get to stay in a hotel together! We even get to eat at Wendy's AND order pizza. Our coaches said they'd take us swimming! We get to miss a 1/2 day of school?! Yahoo! Can we stay up all night?"

I love my team!