Destination Imagination: Year 2

Kendall had such a fun time participating in Destination Imagination last year that he was eager to do it again this year. Last year they had to put together a skit involving some sort of wild animal and their habits. They researched several topics before deciding on wild horses and then wrote the script and made the scenery all by themselves. They have a team coach who can make suggestions or point them toward the right sources but the work has to be done completely by the students. We were disappointed last year to see the elaborate sets of some of the other student groups and were pretty convinced that they had more than suggestions from the adults in charge. Oh well. We were so proud of our kids and the hard work they put in all on their own.

This year the kids opted to do another skit but this category was an impromptu performance based on something endangered. They were given a list of about40 potential subjects ranging from various animals, insects, or plants to items such as the VHS tape and landline telephones. The kids researched the various topics to learn as much as they could about each one and tried to practice a few skits to some of them in order to prepare. The day of the competition they picked an envelope containing a "stock character" and and "non-super power" that they were required to work into the skit in some way. Their stock character was a whiz kid and their non-super power was dancing. They were called into the room where they were given the endangered basking shark as their topic. They then had only seven minutes to come up with a skit incorporating all three of those things.

Here they are during the deliberation time:

Then time is called and they have to present their skit:

They came up with a skit where a whiz-kid and her friend hear about a basking shark in Florida who is in trouble and they fly down to the rescue. Some of the kids became props like the airplane, a ship, and an alarm clock while others were characters like a submarine rental agent and the boat's captain who was heading straight for the basking shark. They were able to get the attention of the boat driver who steered his boat out of the way. And yes there was dancing.

It was really cute and fun to watch them put it all together and ad lib various dialogue including some pretty funny one-liners. And the best part this time is that it was virtually impossible to adults to do the work for the kids so the competition was much fairer. We couldn't stay until evening to get the scores so we should find out today, but regardless the experience for Kendall has been invaluable and he is already looking forward to next year.