Wild Idea Wednesday - Odyssey of the Mind

Today we celebrated a fantastic Odyssey of the Mind season with a pool party and cupcakes. I couldn't be more proud of our team! Four of our six team members were participating in Odyssey for the first time, and it was really fun to see them develop both individually and as a team throughout the year.

The theme for this year's Primary (K-2) problem was Money Maker, which required the team to come up with and perform a humorous eight-minute skit about a money maker character that has all kinds of wild ideas for making money. They must present four wild ideas (three unsuccessful and one successful) and one real-life wild idea, and the skit must include a commercial, a customer and a character that encourages the money maker. Ours also included a hungry pony, a professional news reporter and an adorable police officer.

Since Odyssey is all about creative problem solving and thinking outside the box, we were excited when the team came up with a unique twist on the problem. We'd recently completed a co-op on the history of money, and instead of coming up with wild ideas for earning money, they chose to focus on a more literal interpretation of "making" money.

What I love most about Odyssey - and what's also the biggest challenge, especially for a homeschooling parent - is that the kids have to do everything themselves, from picking a concept, developing characters and writing the script to making props, creating costumes and setting it all up on tournament day.

The team originally performed their skit at the regional tournament in February but was selected to again present their solution at the state tournament this past weekend. It was fun to see how relaxed they were having performed it once already, and they really got to focus on just having fun.

This was Noah's second season doing Odyssey and Ava's first. They both just love it, and we're all looking forward to many great seasons to come!