Sports
Destination ImagiNation Fosters Creative Competition
Kids from all over town competed in this unique program that combines skill and problem-solving.
About 80 North Andover children from grades kindergarten to eighth grade participated in the North Andover Destination ImagiNation Olympics at North Andover Middle School on Sunday.
Destination ImagiNation is a worldwide nonprofit organization, launched in summer 1999, that aims to inspire children to express their creativity, teamwork and problem solving. After its first year, Destination ImagiNation had more than 100,000 students involved with the program. The program has teams of up to seven students, and they provide solutions to two challenges, the Team Challenges and Instant Challenges.
"This year's turn-out was better than last year's," said program coordinator Jeremy Dalmer. "This year, we also improved the structure and framework of the event. The great thing is that the students are excited to join Destination ImagiNation in the future. They had fun with the activities."
Find out what's happening in North Andoverfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The event consisted of teams separated by age, with the kids in kindergarten through second grade called The Rising Stars, and different age groups played at different times between 2 and 6 p.m. The students participated in a number of "instant challenges," lasting from five to 10 minutes, in which they were given a set of instructions and had to use their creativity, teamwork and problem solving to come up with solutions. The children were not allowed to know what the challenges were beforehand and could not receive any help from adults.
"This is a great groundbreaker and introduction to the instant challenge portion of Designation ImagiNation," volunteer Marsha Fielder said. "It is a nice fundraiser toward the North Andover group for Destination ImagiNation as well."
Find out what's happening in North Andoverfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
One of the instant challenges during today's Olympics was called "silly story," where the team of students had to create a story to go along with a picture that they painted within a given time frame.
"Destination ImagiNation lets kids be creative and come up with different ideas for solutions," team leader Kim Hearst said. "It encourages creative neurons in order to find more than one answer to a certain problem."
The Team Challenges for Destination ImagiNation are held from October to March. Their purpose is to be open-ended and multidisciplinary. Students have this time to prepare a solution to their choice of challenges.
