Destination Imagination | 2013 Season Recap

On Saturday, our Destination ImagiNation Team competed in the State Tournament.  I've mentioned before that I, along with my friend, Heather, manage a team of six 4th graders.  It is our third year together as managers and the 4th year Andrew has been involved with DI.  Each year gets a bit better.  It has been a pleasure {most of the time! wink.} to watch these kids become a stronger team, to work together to creatively solve problems, develop their critical thinking abilities and use their IMAGINATION.  This was by far their best year together.  They took on the Community Outreach challenge and decided to make their school a better place. {You'll have to watch the video to see what they did!}  The challenge required they make a documentary film of their process, which was right up Andrew-Future-Film-Maker's alley.  They gave an amazing performance at Regional's winning first place overall and the coveted DaVinci Award for creativity.  It was truly the highlight of the season.  The State Tournament didn't go as well.  They had struggles with both their Instant Challenge and the Central Challenge.  There were some AV glitches and unexpected mishaps that made it hard to end the season on a high note.  They handled it with such grace!  I think I was more impressed by their behavior when things were falling apart than I was when they gave a perfect performance at Regionals.  I couldn't help but think of this quote...

" The true test of character is not how much we know how 

to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."

and while they don't know it yet, winning may be more fun, but it is the setbacks and mistakes in life from which we learn the most.  Despite all the challenges they had yesterday, here is what the judges said about our team...

"GREAT Movie! GREAT Kids! GREAT Enthusiasm!"

"Your skit shows a lot of hard work!"

"AWESOME teamwork"

"Way to overcome obstacles"

"Terrific GRACE UNDER PRESSURE shown by child working the projector"

"GREAT ATTITUDES and HARD WORK"

"Great TEAMWORK"

"It looks like the students at your school really liked your idea"

"Incredible recovery by the projector guy in a tough situation"

{note: obviously we had some projector + sound issues.  "projector guy" was Andrew. :)}

I still think the movie {and our team} is pretty "SAWESOME" (a new word I picked up yesterday: Super + Awesome. HA!)  See for yourself...