Instant Challenge Workshop

 

Question:  What do you get when you put together...

          28 kids from five DI teams

          8 adults skilled at leading them

          3 teenagers returning to impart DI wisdom

          4 homespun instant challenges?

Answer:  A lot of learning, fun, camaraderie and a BIG PARTY!

 

 

First Skit

          "So nobody move the castle, O.K.?"

          Kalli, Jessica and Hannah had just completed the detail painting, and we had moved it to the middle of our "set" for drying and practicing.  In a flash, Jason was over to test the wet paint.  We'll just move the other props in and out of the staging area, I explained, and spoke a pretend announcement of the team's entrance.

          Props began to fly.  Kalli and Natalie drug the cardboard water over, Kevin picked up the boat and moved it from one side of the set to the other, deciding on the most practical placement with Hannah's help.  Jason...where was Jason?  Cole directed my eye to him, trying desperately to get the wooden briefcase with the bridge in it down from a tall workstation.  John saw him too--"Wait, boys!" he stood up. "The paint is still drying on that, too!  You'll have to pretend on that for today..."

          They reluctantly rejoined the group, rocking back and forth on the makeshift weigher John had created for the bridge to rest on.  Natalie stood amazingly still, arm raised as it would be for most of the skit.  She was the Statue of Liberty, bearing an ice-cream cone instead of a torch, as their theme demanded.    Jessica and Kalli made their entrance, and seven stars were born, in DI style.

 

Instant Challenge Workshop

 

          Jill's attempts at controlling the flow of toothpicks was being thwarted by the seven second graders gathered around her on the floor.  She had instructed them to use twelve toothpicks to make words, but that plan quickly expanded to twelve toothpicks--per kid.  Going with the flow, she wrote each word down, mentally rating it for length and creativity.  'Dead.' 'Kill.'  'Gun.'  We could guess which part of our group these were from.  Apparently running out of short words of destruction, the boys moved on, following Hannah's lead ("see, I can spell mine forward, backward, and upside-down") to spell their own names.  Or did they move on at all?

 

 

          The subjects were blindfolded--Cole and Jessica--with the hope that all could be quiet and those two could trust their teammates to lead them around the placed obstacles in the room.  The biggest obstacle, it turns out, was each other.  The girls cried to the boys to get out of Jessica's way, as much as an invitation to Cole to bound toward the voice he identified as hers.  He kicked the oversized ball, and Jason and Kevin assisted in his chaotic pursuit by pushing him, from either side, in conflicting directions.  The girls noted the goal quickly and pulled Jessica over to avoid the impending crash.  Natalie played blocker as Kalli and Hannah maneuvered Jessica quickly around the inanimate obstacles to arrive safely at the wall on the other side. 

          "No fair!" cried the boys, "We should be first!"

          Team sports is a concept more familiar than competing against a group not even in the room.  Will we get there?  It remains to be seen.