Our final meeting of 2008! We had a nice long three hour meeting this afternoon. A lot of progress was made on the story and some progress on set design. The team also did a fun quick instant challenge.
The story is still a work in process but one read through, a fairly major re-write, and another read through did happen today.
On the set front there is at least one concept on how to build the huge bee hive, flowers, and blades of grass. Next year our meeting will most likely shift to the Warpinski's house, they've agree to allow us to use the extra room above their garage to do our set construction. I'll send more details as they become available.
The instant challenge today had the team building a support between two tables to hang two gondolas from (there was some debate about what a gondola is, the most famous example are flat bottomed boats used in Venice, however they are also cars suspended from cables commonly used on ski lifts), if the team succeeded in hanging the cars the final stage involved loading the gondolas down. The team worked well together and came up with a solution capable of supporting both gondolas and all of the weights.
Our next meeting is schedule for Sunday January 4th from noon - 3pm. I'll be in touch after Christmas to finalize the time and location.
The photo album has been updated with pictures from today's meeting.
I hope everyone has a happy, restful, safe Christmas holiday break.
Until next year,
Mr. H
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Meeting #7 - 12/13/08
Today's meeting was "get serious" time, this meeting and one more and the 2008 portion of the DI season is over, once 2009 hits things move fast and before we know it tournament will be here. The team broke up into two groups, with one group working on the story and one group brainstorming ways to build the sets.
Some good progress was made on the story, I won't go into details but it's starting to take shape and sounding promising. The big challenge is going to be building the sets. A part of the challenge is building three dimensional set pieces instead of just simple flat painted backdrops (or in addition to). The team plans to build a huge bee hive that they can rotate on stage so they can have some scenes inside the hive and some scenes outside the hive. Right now they have no idea how they are going to build this. They also have some plans to build parts of the sets in such a way that the bees can appear to fly. Their plan is to have a blue "sky" backdrop and stairs moving to a raised platform also painted blue so by walking up the stairs and onto the platform it appears they are flying off the ground.
The team then did a quick instant challenge where they had the usual collection of DI stuff (Popsicle sticks, cotton balls, balloons, paper clips, mailing labels, etc.) and had to create a new winter sport. They had 8 minutes to create the sport and plan a theatrical presentation about their new sport, the performance was to last 2 minutes. Their sport involved some type of downhill event with balloons, jumps, and goal post type things. I believe the sport was played by hamsters who were inside of their exercise balls (the balloon).
That is all for this week, next week the last meeting of 2008!
Some good progress was made on the story, I won't go into details but it's starting to take shape and sounding promising. The big challenge is going to be building the sets. A part of the challenge is building three dimensional set pieces instead of just simple flat painted backdrops (or in addition to). The team plans to build a huge bee hive that they can rotate on stage so they can have some scenes inside the hive and some scenes outside the hive. Right now they have no idea how they are going to build this. They also have some plans to build parts of the sets in such a way that the bees can appear to fly. Their plan is to have a blue "sky" backdrop and stairs moving to a raised platform also painted blue so by walking up the stairs and onto the platform it appears they are flying off the ground.
The team then did a quick instant challenge where they had the usual collection of DI stuff (Popsicle sticks, cotton balls, balloons, paper clips, mailing labels, etc.) and had to create a new winter sport. They had 8 minutes to create the sport and plan a theatrical presentation about their new sport, the performance was to last 2 minutes. Their sport involved some type of downhill event with balloons, jumps, and goal post type things. I believe the sport was played by hamsters who were inside of their exercise balls (the balloon).
That is all for this week, next week the last meeting of 2008!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Meeting #6 - 12/6/08
Our first meeting after the week off for Thanksgiving.
The team dove in and started brainstorming ideas for their main challenge. A big part of the challenge is making 3D set pieces that are the correct scale. Since the team is using bee's as their animal they will be building some huge set pieces. Using some of their advanced math skills they determined a bee hive would have to be about 50' tall and a blade of grass would have to be about 10' tall. They also brainstormed a variety of potential story lines including:
killer/normal bees
invasion of the bees
A day in the life of bees
bees and bears
attack of the bees
bees collection pollen
drama in a bees life
cell phones killing bees
The teams creativity slowed down a bit so we took a break and did an instant challenge. The first part of the challenge involved the team reenacting a scene from a Christmas show or special, it could be either real or imaginary. They chose the Grinch and reenacted the scene where the Grinch steals the Christmas Tree. They had 10 minutes to select the scene and rehearse their presentation. After presenting their presentation they had to do it over again in three different methods. For one method they had to reverse the good and bad characters, the Grinch became a "good" character and Cindy Lou became a "bad" character. Next they had to reenact the story which was written 51 years ago showing how it would be different in modern times. Finally they had to reenact the story with all of the characters very old. This is the version they had the most fun with. I took short videos of all of this but the team won't let me post them. However I did grab some stills from the videos and posted those so you can get a feel for the dramatic flair the team has!
After the instant challenge the team went back to working on the main challenge. The current concept involves two bee hives a "good" hive and an "evil" hive. After Christmas we will most likely start building set pieces - we will probably need a new location to do this, KI won't work well for this phase of the season. If anyone has a basement that would be up to the task and wouldn't mind us holding some meetings in their basement please let me know.
That's all for this week.
The team dove in and started brainstorming ideas for their main challenge. A big part of the challenge is making 3D set pieces that are the correct scale. Since the team is using bee's as their animal they will be building some huge set pieces. Using some of their advanced math skills they determined a bee hive would have to be about 50' tall and a blade of grass would have to be about 10' tall. They also brainstormed a variety of potential story lines including:
killer/normal bees
invasion of the bees
A day in the life of bees
bees and bears
attack of the bees
bees collection pollen
drama in a bees life
cell phones killing bees
The teams creativity slowed down a bit so we took a break and did an instant challenge. The first part of the challenge involved the team reenacting a scene from a Christmas show or special, it could be either real or imaginary. They chose the Grinch and reenacted the scene where the Grinch steals the Christmas Tree. They had 10 minutes to select the scene and rehearse their presentation. After presenting their presentation they had to do it over again in three different methods. For one method they had to reverse the good and bad characters, the Grinch became a "good" character and Cindy Lou became a "bad" character. Next they had to reenact the story which was written 51 years ago showing how it would be different in modern times. Finally they had to reenact the story with all of the characters very old. This is the version they had the most fun with. I took short videos of all of this but the team won't let me post them. However I did grab some stills from the videos and posted those so you can get a feel for the dramatic flair the team has!
After the instant challenge the team went back to working on the main challenge. The current concept involves two bee hives a "good" hive and an "evil" hive. After Christmas we will most likely start building set pieces - we will probably need a new location to do this, KI won't work well for this phase of the season. If anyone has a basement that would be up to the task and wouldn't mind us holding some meetings in their basement please let me know.
That's all for this week.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Meeting #5 - 11/22/08
The team did some pretty serious work on their main challenge today. They have settled on bees as their "featured creature" and the main three dimensional set piece will be a bee hive that they will rotate, one side will be the outside of the hive and the other side will be the interior of the hive. The two forms of communication (I think) will be a dance bee's do to communicate, the other will be a scent trail they leave to lead bees to flowers.
We also did an instant challenge involving building a sailing type vehicle that travels on a wire propelled by a fan. The team was very successful with this challenge easily traversing the entire length of the wire.
There are some new pictures to check out in the photo album. I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving.
Thanks,
Mr. H
We also did an instant challenge involving building a sailing type vehicle that travels on a wire propelled by a fan. The team was very successful with this challenge easily traversing the entire length of the wire.
There are some new pictures to check out in the photo album. I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving.
Thanks,
Mr. H
Monday, November 17, 2008
Meeting #4 - 11/16/08
This meeting we reviewed the animal communication research the various team members did. After everyone presented their information the team was heavily leaning towards doing some type of an insect, bees, ants, praying mantises, etc. The team is intrigued by having to build sets showing the size of the insects. Before the next meeting everyone is going to try and do some more research about how a variety of insects communicate with each other. One of the key elements of the challenge is to depict two ways the "feature creature" communicates. The method of communication must be a real way the animal communicates.
We also did two small instant challenge type activities. The first involved trying to pass an object around a circle. Each person in the circle has a number but they are not standing next to the person that has the number above or below theirs. First they must pass one object from person to person in ascending order. After they mastered that we added another object they had to pass in descending order. Finally they had to pass a cup of water around the outside of the circle while also passing the other objects in ascending and descending order. As you can probably imagine this is relatively difficult. The team got pretty good at it but didn't really master the three objects at the same time. The second instant challenge activity was telling a story together. We did this two different ways, first each team member could only say one word, they we did a variation where a team member had to keep telling the story while I was pointing at them. We improved situations involving the different animals they researched.
This Thursday we hope to visit Notre Dame elementary school and help them since this is the first year they have done DI. We have at least three team members that have volunteered to participate. Please check the photo album for the latest pictures.
We also did two small instant challenge type activities. The first involved trying to pass an object around a circle. Each person in the circle has a number but they are not standing next to the person that has the number above or below theirs. First they must pass one object from person to person in ascending order. After they mastered that we added another object they had to pass in descending order. Finally they had to pass a cup of water around the outside of the circle while also passing the other objects in ascending and descending order. As you can probably imagine this is relatively difficult. The team got pretty good at it but didn't really master the three objects at the same time. The second instant challenge activity was telling a story together. We did this two different ways, first each team member could only say one word, they we did a variation where a team member had to keep telling the story while I was pointing at them. We improved situations involving the different animals they researched.
This Thursday we hope to visit Notre Dame elementary school and help them since this is the first year they have done DI. We have at least three team members that have volunteered to participate. Please check the photo album for the latest pictures.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Meeting #3 - 11/1/08
We were short handed this meeting with only four team members able to attend. Please keep in mind it's not a problem if someone can't make a meeting.
We spent some time discussing the main challenge selection. The team members present agreed to take a fresh look at challenges B & C since these challenges had the most variety of tasks, some elements involving building and designing, some elements involving writing and acting. The team members present settled on challenge B - Animal Instinct. This is a very interesting looking challenge with some interesting possibilities. The team brainstormed a list of 14 possible animals they could use for this challenge and assigned two animals to each team member to research before our next meeting. The goal of the research is to identify how the animals communicate. Depicting this communication is central to the challenge. Here are the animal assignments...
Grant - Hippos, Chicken
Tamera - Mice, Dogs
Chloe - Giraffe, Fish
Erin - Elephants, Ants
Ben - Birds, Starfish
Katie - Cats, Bees
Austin - Whales, Kangaroos
Next the team did an instant challenge where they had to build a ramp using some stuff I brought along. The goal was to have a matchbox car roll down the ramp to see how far it could jump (Evil Knievil) style. The team dove right in and built an impressive tall ramp. It was able to jump about 4 cardboard bricks. A picture is worth a thousand works so check out the picture album below. If you ever want to view larger versions of the pictures just click on the small photo album below.
Finally the team worked some more on their egg event preparations. They practiced the long jump event and the high jump event and were getting pretty good at it. After breaking the final egg they headed back inside to make some last minute adjustments to their catching device. They also decided they would like to all wear helmets next week to the egg event. The team would like everyone to bring a helmet to the event next week, a bike helmet, football helmet, hard hat, etc. Katie is going to make some team stickers to put on everyone's helmet the morning of the egg event.
Next week - the egg event!
We spent some time discussing the main challenge selection. The team members present agreed to take a fresh look at challenges B & C since these challenges had the most variety of tasks, some elements involving building and designing, some elements involving writing and acting. The team members present settled on challenge B - Animal Instinct. This is a very interesting looking challenge with some interesting possibilities. The team brainstormed a list of 14 possible animals they could use for this challenge and assigned two animals to each team member to research before our next meeting. The goal of the research is to identify how the animals communicate. Depicting this communication is central to the challenge. Here are the animal assignments...
Grant - Hippos, Chicken
Tamera - Mice, Dogs
Chloe - Giraffe, Fish
Erin - Elephants, Ants
Ben - Birds, Starfish
Katie - Cats, Bees
Austin - Whales, Kangaroos
Next the team did an instant challenge where they had to build a ramp using some stuff I brought along. The goal was to have a matchbox car roll down the ramp to see how far it could jump (Evil Knievil) style. The team dove right in and built an impressive tall ramp. It was able to jump about 4 cardboard bricks. A picture is worth a thousand works so check out the picture album below. If you ever want to view larger versions of the pictures just click on the small photo album below.
Finally the team worked some more on their egg event preparations. They practiced the long jump event and the high jump event and were getting pretty good at it. After breaking the final egg they headed back inside to make some last minute adjustments to their catching device. They also decided they would like to all wear helmets next week to the egg event. The team would like everyone to bring a helmet to the event next week, a bike helmet, football helmet, hard hat, etc. Katie is going to make some team stickers to put on everyone's helmet the morning of the egg event.
Next week - the egg event!
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Meeting #2 - 10/26/08
We now have two meetings under out belt. For this second meeting we met at KI to avoid the animal dander in my house. I'm happy to report no allergy issues this week!
We worked on three main things at this meeting, the egg event, an instant challenge, and picking our main challenge. I'll start with the most successful and work to the least successful.
I was amazed at how well the team did with the egg event challenge. They brainstormed and built a device that seemed capable of safely catching the egg; even though we couldn't completely recreate the final event (a "dive" from 60 feet in the air) they attempted to simulate the forces the egg may see in this event and were generally successful. I won't go into the details of their catching device here; I'll reveal more after the egg event is over.
The teams first formal instant challenge also went well. They had to design and build a decorative structure for an imaginary nation, give a presentation about it, and then see how much weight it could hold. They had a very nice looking structure and presentation about it. Unfortunately it didn't hold a lot of weight. I used large rolls of tape for weight and it fell down when the first roll was place on it. We used this challenge as an opportunity to review some structural concepts, and basic Instant Challenge concepts. This was Grant's first real Instant Challenge. Overall the team did a nice job.
Our least successful task of the day came in working on selecting a main challenge. There are team members who are favoring challenge E which involves mainly building a lightweight structure that can hold as much weight as possible, this is a very pure technical challenge, and there are those that are favoring the improv challenge. Interestingly the challenges that offer the most diversity in tasks (i.e. involve writing, acting, designing, building, etc.) were quickly ruled out last week. Given the diversity of interests in the team members I think they may need to revisit these challenges to find one that makes all team members a little happy but nobody completely happy (in other words a compromise). I took some photos of the team doing their Instant Challenge today. Check out the photo album link if you want to view them. The scary looking chart was may attempt at classifying the challenges and the interest of team members. Tamera could not be at the meeting today but the team felt pretty comfortable in defining where her interests are; after Tamera has a chance to see the chart we'll see how well they really know her.
We worked on three main things at this meeting, the egg event, an instant challenge, and picking our main challenge. I'll start with the most successful and work to the least successful.
I was amazed at how well the team did with the egg event challenge. They brainstormed and built a device that seemed capable of safely catching the egg; even though we couldn't completely recreate the final event (a "dive" from 60 feet in the air) they attempted to simulate the forces the egg may see in this event and were generally successful. I won't go into the details of their catching device here; I'll reveal more after the egg event is over.
The teams first formal instant challenge also went well. They had to design and build a decorative structure for an imaginary nation, give a presentation about it, and then see how much weight it could hold. They had a very nice looking structure and presentation about it. Unfortunately it didn't hold a lot of weight. I used large rolls of tape for weight and it fell down when the first roll was place on it. We used this challenge as an opportunity to review some structural concepts, and basic Instant Challenge concepts. This was Grant's first real Instant Challenge. Overall the team did a nice job.
Our least successful task of the day came in working on selecting a main challenge. There are team members who are favoring challenge E which involves mainly building a lightweight structure that can hold as much weight as possible, this is a very pure technical challenge, and there are those that are favoring the improv challenge. Interestingly the challenges that offer the most diversity in tasks (i.e. involve writing, acting, designing, building, etc.) were quickly ruled out last week. Given the diversity of interests in the team members I think they may need to revisit these challenges to find one that makes all team members a little happy but nobody completely happy (in other words a compromise). I took some photos of the team doing their Instant Challenge today. Check out the photo album link if you want to view them. The scary looking chart was may attempt at classifying the challenges and the interest of team members. Tamera could not be at the meeting today but the team felt pretty comfortable in defining where her interests are; after Tamera has a chance to see the chart we'll see how well they really know her.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Meeting #1 - 10/19/08
Our first meeting is complete. It was a bit of a challenging meeting between schedule conflicts and allergies. We will be in search of a new meeting location after watching Ben struggle through being in our animal infested house. If anyone has any ideas for meeting locations let me know, I'll be looking into a couple of ideas this week.
We began narrowing our main challenge selection. We've basically eliminated two possibilities leaving three behind.
We also took a look at the rules for the egg event this year. There are some assignments for things to bring next week so we can do some eggxperimenting. Here is the list...
-Tamera is bringing eggs
-Erin is bringing a large bucket
-Katie is bringing some boxes
-Chloe is bringing balloons
This is Grant's first year doing DI so we also spent some time talking about some of the things involved in DI and played a brief round of a classic DI game called "what is it?".
Next week we will discuss challenge selections some more, work on testing some egg catching device concepts, and do at least one instant challenge. If you are curious to see the rules for this years egg event follow the link below.
http://www.stbernardgb.org/pdf/Team_Information_for_2008_2009_Egg_Event_ML.pdf
We began narrowing our main challenge selection. We've basically eliminated two possibilities leaving three behind.
We also took a look at the rules for the egg event this year. There are some assignments for things to bring next week so we can do some eggxperimenting. Here is the list...
-Tamera is bringing eggs
-Erin is bringing a large bucket
-Katie is bringing some boxes
-Chloe is bringing balloons
This is Grant's first year doing DI so we also spent some time talking about some of the things involved in DI and played a brief round of a classic DI game called "what is it?".
Next week we will discuss challenge selections some more, work on testing some egg catching device concepts, and do at least one instant challenge. If you are curious to see the rules for this years egg event follow the link below.
http://www.stbernardgb.org/pdf/Team_Information_for_2008_2009_Egg_Event_ML.pdf
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