Teams from Rosa Parks Elementary School and SCAPA Bluegrass brought home trophies from this spring’s Destination ImagiNation state tournament.

 

Destination ImagiNation is a problem-solving program that helps youngsters learn to work as a team, nurtures mutual respect and enhances self-confidence and creative skills.

 

“We have found that through this program, students are really thinking through tough challenges and using those skills to figure out practical, real-life problems,” said Jodi Dodd, the coordinator at Rosa Parks. “I love watching teams come to understand what teamwork is all about.”

 

Eight Rosa Parks teams involving 50 students and two SCAPA teams with 14 participants traveled to Cincinnati on March 29 to compete with 80 other teams.

 

The students had started by choosing one of five central challenges they would work on, as a team, for the year. Each offered a different focus, such as mathematics, technical design and construction, experimentation, theater arts, social studies, research, story development, architecture, geography, structural engineering and other disciplines requiring critical-thinking skills.

 

For more information about the Kentucky affiliate, go to www.ky-di.org or e-mail jodidodd@gmail.com.

 

Congratulations to these top winners:

 

1^st place in Switch! – The Penguin Power team, made up of fourth- and fifth-graders, built a structure weighing less than 22 grams that could hold 85 pounds. Team members included Holly Bennett, Joel Nelson, Sophia Sawaya, Aidan Ziliak, Herman Bratcher and Nancy Wu.

 

2^nd place in DI’ve Got a Secret – Live Justice, a second- and third-grade team, revealed an interesting secret by telling how some woodland creatures devised a plan to fool the owl by making a false girlfriend for him. The team included Victor Arsenescu, Samual Chanberlain-Dempsey, Madi Halwes, Ben Naehr, Victoria Adcock and Mackenzie Clay.

 

2^nd place in Chorific! The Thunder Thinkers, a team of first- through third-graders, performed a skit about a surfer dude named Cinderfella who raps while doing his chores. Team members included Zachary Craft, Saiprasad Naidu, Shea Hausman, Anna Lytchakov, Sean Pelton and Brian Zhu.

 

2^nd place in Hit or Myth – The Aqua Raiders, a fourth- and fifth-grade team, discovered a mythological Indian god named Shiva in a U.S. museum who came to life and took them on a journey to the Himalayas and India. The team included Neha Kadambi, Ben Lumpp, Nandini Chatterjee, Katelyn Craft, John Richard Isenhour and Ben Robinson.

 

Renaissance Award: The Bluebie Blablibs, a K-1 team, was honored for Engineering Design in a performance. They had a turning set design, costumes made of recycled materials and a cheese fondue device that spins using an electric motor. Team members included Michael Blakemore, Annesh Kadambi, Eli Dodd, Elyse Halwes, William Klement, Adam Telechbush and Stephanie Yang.

 

 

 

- END -