Good news from the Holfoth house. Caleb's team: a mixed gender group of six from his school participated in the regional Odyessy of the Mind competition after months of creation, practice and preparation. They won 1st place for their division out of 15 teams competing with the same problem in their division! They are going to the NY state competition in Binghamton the weekend of March 27th. It is rare that a team this young would win 1st place! Winning 1st place at states would send them to the World competition in Michigan at Michigan State University.

They had to research the problem they chose, discovered treasures and give a long term solution- basically a skit to present all the required information. Much tougher than it sounds as the problems are extremely detailed. All the props, script, etc must be created by the kids. They have a very small budget for materials. The coaches (who are volunteering their time) supervise, help them organize their time and guide them through delimna's using problem solving strategies. They must also participate in a spontaneous competition which requires creativity without props. In this scenario they may be asked any number of things. One could be to build a structure that can hold 1# of weight using toothpicks and marshmallows and/or to list 5 items from the garage to bring to the dinner table and what each would be used for and why. Both the spontaneous and long term problems are timed.
It's good for the sports nut to be prasied for good thinking!

For more information you can go to www.ootmweb.org/region14
their team number is 23950
Problem 3 Div I