I mentioned about 2 months back that I was coaching an Odyssey of the Mind team yet I don’t think I ever really explained anything about it. OM is an international program designed to let youth think outside of the box and be creative. It is all in English and an excellent opportunity for children and teens that live in countries that don’t promote and offer creative outlets for them. In countries such as Moldova students in schools, from what I have noticed, aren’t encouraged to be creative like we are in the States. They aren’t given the opportunities such as drama classes and don’t do interesting class projects like we are used to. When I first started meeting with my team it always took the first half hour of our sessions to coax them out of their shells. You could tell they weren’t used to just letting go and being goofy and creative. Of course now they are all totally crazy and it is hard to get them to be serious, but hat is the way it should be at this age in their lives.
So, OM is a competition for youth from about age 6 to about age 21 or so. Kids and teens form teams of 5-7 in their age group. Every winter, around November, they are presented with 5 long term problems that change every year. They have to choose one problem that they would like to solve over the next three months to present at the national competition in February. This year one problem consisted of building a machine that would transport an object from one place to another, another was making a pop up book. Our team chose the problem “Around the World in 8 Minutes.” For their problem they had to have a traveler which visited 3 locations. One of the locations had to be either the North or South Pole, the second location had to be a known place on Earth, and the third location an unknown location that only the people living there would know it existed. The traveler has to have a reason for visiting each location and the skit can only be 8 minutes. The hard part for us as coaches is that we cannot give any ideas. We can only encourage them to be creative and ask questions.
My group came up with the story that there was a creature whose planet blew up and he was the only survivor. He “led a nomadic lifestyle traveling around the galaxy in search of a creature like himself.” He spotted the South Pole and went there hoping to find someone. He came across some scientists who told him to go to Morocco, our second location. When he got to Morocco he met with the head of a community and in exchange for a totem he wore around his neck the head of the community gave him a map to Hawaii where there was a volcano. The creature had to enter the volcano which contained the gates of Hell. In hell, our third unknown location, he had to make a deal with the devil to get his girlfriend back. The devil, who was a girl, was fat and wanted to be thin again so the creature had to help the devil workout and become thin before his girlfriend was freed. After the girlfriend was freed the devil begged them to stay in hell with her and they agreed because they had no planet to go back to. The end.
Their story was really funny the way they acted it out and hopefully, if I can, I will post the video of it here. The competition was last Saturday in Chisinau. The problem that our team chose was very popular and we had to compete against 16 teams in our age category. We scored really well on our problem but only came in 8th place because along with the long term problem there is also a spontaneous problem portion of the competition. For the spontaneous problem the team goes into a room of judges and has to solve a problem on the spot. The problem presented this year was really hard and dumb and our team scored really low on it affecting our overall score and placing us 8th. The kids had fun though and really enjoyed the experience. The bummer part about not winning is that we cannot go to Germany for the international competition. Oh well, there is always next year!
P.S. Our team name was the Bălţi Crazy Creative Soldiers
So, OM is a competition for youth from about age 6 to about age 21 or so. Kids and teens form teams of 5-7 in their age group. Every winter, around November, they are presented with 5 long term problems that change every year. They have to choose one problem that they would like to solve over the next three months to present at the national competition in February. This year one problem consisted of building a machine that would transport an object from one place to another, another was making a pop up book. Our team chose the problem “Around the World in 8 Minutes.” For their problem they had to have a traveler which visited 3 locations. One of the locations had to be either the North or South Pole, the second location had to be a known place on Earth, and the third location an unknown location that only the people living there would know it existed. The traveler has to have a reason for visiting each location and the skit can only be 8 minutes. The hard part for us as coaches is that we cannot give any ideas. We can only encourage them to be creative and ask questions.
My group came up with the story that there was a creature whose planet blew up and he was the only survivor. He “led a nomadic lifestyle traveling around the galaxy in search of a creature like himself.” He spotted the South Pole and went there hoping to find someone. He came across some scientists who told him to go to Morocco, our second location. When he got to Morocco he met with the head of a community and in exchange for a totem he wore around his neck the head of the community gave him a map to Hawaii where there was a volcano. The creature had to enter the volcano which contained the gates of Hell. In hell, our third unknown location, he had to make a deal with the devil to get his girlfriend back. The devil, who was a girl, was fat and wanted to be thin again so the creature had to help the devil workout and become thin before his girlfriend was freed. After the girlfriend was freed the devil begged them to stay in hell with her and they agreed because they had no planet to go back to. The end.
Their story was really funny the way they acted it out and hopefully, if I can, I will post the video of it here. The competition was last Saturday in Chisinau. The problem that our team chose was very popular and we had to compete against 16 teams in our age category. We scored really well on our problem but only came in 8th place because along with the long term problem there is also a spontaneous problem portion of the competition. For the spontaneous problem the team goes into a room of judges and has to solve a problem on the spot. The problem presented this year was really hard and dumb and our team scored really low on it affecting our overall score and placing us 8th. The kids had fun though and really enjoyed the experience. The bummer part about not winning is that we cannot go to Germany for the international competition. Oh well, there is always next year!
P.S. Our team name was the Bălţi Crazy Creative Soldiers
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