Destination Imagination!!

Julia has spent most of her Fridays this year with a group of 7 other kids participating in a program called Destination Imagination. This is a worldwide program which focuses on child-led exploration and creation in the areas science, art, and technology. The organization puts forth challenges which the children can choose from and then the kids spend several months preparing for that challenge.

Julia's group named themselves "Wild Animals Run" and their challenge was to create an animal mish-mash, a new animal that has features from two other animals. They had to determine what the animal looked like, which features it took from each of it's original animals, and tell a story about how the animal was created and what environment it lives in.

The kids have been working on this since last September and last weekend they presented their story at our state tournament. Their creation was a perecheetah - a mish-mash of a peregrine falcon and a cheetah! They did a fantastic job with their play. The story that they developed was about a land (Land No Name) that is populated by animals (including a bunny - Julia!) and is visited by both good and bad wizards. The bad wizard creates a tornado to destroy the animals world and the good wizards create tornados to stop her. These tornados cause the peregrine falcon and cheetah to get mixed up and the perecheetah is created! So imaginative!

It was wonderful to see all the kids participate and have such a great time showing off their own creations and story. They were all super excited and proud of themselves and are already looking forward to next year!