Welcome the team from Appleton Elementary School from New Ipswich! Meet Kameko, Victoria, Emily, Derrick, Brier, Isreal and Justin!

This team is heading off to compete with teams from all 50 states and nearly 20 countries at Destination ImagiNation Global Finals!

The road to getting through Regional and State Finals was not easy. Their Challenge, Card-DI-ology calls for this team of third and fourth graders to blend architectural design, structural engineering, construction, research, innovation, design process, architectural drawings, math, theatre and teamwork. A performance skit -- or what looks like one -- is actually crafted to meet the nearly 20 scoring areas of this challenge. That includes a feather-weight, weight bearing structure of cards.

Since the Challenge is totally team solved, the team has to learn to develop as a team to be this successful. "It was hard to decide which ideas to use because everyone had a lot of good ones", according to Justin. Emily thought " Making the [performance] skit and coming up with an idea for building a strong structure" were the most challenging elements. Kameko felt "the most important part is not being able to have help from anyone but your team members".

The Team Challenge is one aspect of competition. Isreal thought "the most challenging part was the Instant Challenge because you have to think of ideas really fast". The Instant Challenge component challenges the team to demonstrate their "think-on-their-feet" skills. The need to solve an additional challenge, generally within 7 minutes of hearing it.

The team succeeded, and are now heading for a trip of a lifetime to Global Finals!

 

It was another great day at Global Finals as the team from Appleton took to the Global stage!

Their performance blended the required topics VERY well, and their performance blended the ^ and the skit nicely. They took the "cards" of Card-DI-ology off in a different direction with their theme:

Is spending too much money is the cards for you? If it is, you'll be able to relate to this mom. She loves to shop with her credit cards. Will she be able to control her habit or will she become flat broke?

So, what did the team enjoy?

Brier said, " the most important thing about DI is teamwork and learning new things". Victoria added that "it is fun to hang out with your team who have become your friends". Especially at Globals!

This was a great day for Appleton Elementary's Destination ImagiNation team!