More Odyssey of the Mind

At Saturday's state competition, Natalie's Odyssey of the Mind team won first place on the elementary level for their "Earth Trek" problem. The teams that finish first and second in the state are eligible to go on to the World Finals. This year's World Finals will be held at Iowa State University in May, so it looks like the family is going to be spending some time apart at the end of next month: Natalie and Lisa will be off to Iowa, and Meredith--who will still have school--and I will be staying home.

And going to Iowa has always been a dream of mine!

Anyway, everyone was VERY excited yesterday. And it wasn't just Natalie's team that did well. There were FIVE Beechwood teams who qualified for the state meet (2 elementary teams, 1 middle school team, and 2 high school teams) and FOUR of them finished first and will be going to Iowa. The one team that didn't finish first finished third, and they will go to Iowa if either of the two teams that beat them cannot. So it was a pretty happy day for everyone yesterday.

By the way, I don't think I described it well last time, but this is the task that Natalie's team decided to take on all of those many months ago in their initial meeting:

Earth Trek
This problem requires teams to design and build a small vehicle that will visit four locations. The locations will be different places within one or more team-determined environments. Each time the vehicle leaves a location it will look different in appearance, and after leaving one of the locations it will appear to be a group of vehicles that are traveling together. The team's performance will incorporate the visits to the locations, the environments, and the changes in appearance of the vehicle. Cost limit: $145 US

As I mentioned previously, we aren't allowed to post the video of the children's solution to the problem above until after the World Event, but here's video of the Awards Ceremony, which was held at Western Kentucky University's Diddle Arena.