So, here, now that most of the "busy" is over, is the long tale of the last few weeks:
January was fairly busy in and of itself, but began at a reasonable pace. On the 18th of January we had our first Odyessy of the Mind meeting (hereafter referred to as OM).
OM is a program that encourages children to think creatively and to work together to solve problems. There were five problems to choose from, and the team that I was asked to coach chose the Tee Structure. They had to build a structure out of balsa wood that was at least 8" tall and weighed less than 18 grams that would hold up to ten golf balls. In the OM competition, the structure and golf balls would have to hold the weight of a crusher board and then hold weights on top of that.
So, we had our first meeting and they decided (we as coaches are not actually allowed to help them in any way. We can ask them leading questions to guide them in the right direction, but we were not allowed to do anything else, unless asked - for example, drive to a store and get the balsa wood for them) that they were going to build their structure in the shape of a triangle. (As a side note, OM problems come out in October, and for some reason the school took until January to get a sponsor. We had four weeks to prepare for the competition instead of three months.)
We spent an hour an a half with seven kids all trying to tell each other what to do. The structure fell apart long before they were able to get it to even take shape.
Also, some close friends of ours had been trying to adopt for a while, and were finally given the okay to adopt FOUR siblings. The oldest is in first grade, and so I am going to be taking him to and from school and also watching him at our house after school for a few hours. In order to do that, I have to fill out a mountain of paperwork, have a TB test and a doctor's physical, get fingerprinted and take a CPR/First Aid class.
There were three OM meetings that week, in which we (my assistant coach and I) got smart and split the kids into three groups (structure, skit, and spontaneous). We had only that week been told that the kid needed to perform a skit as well. Making smaller groups allowed the kids to focus on their strengths, rather than argue over their weaknesses. With only three kids now working on the structure, work moved along more smoothly. They decided to try a more square shape. We also had one of the team's older brothers who has done OM three times, come and practice the spontaneous questions with them.
Interspersed into that week was volunteering at school, Kevin's brother's baby was born, a baby shower, Story-time at the Library with Katrina, and preparing for a talk on Sunday.
We finally tested the structure, which broke apart when we put the crusher board on it. So, the kids went back to the drawing board. The next week we met four times. They added some more supports to try to keep the golf balls from breaking through. During that week, Rebecca started Super Readers Club at school, I had my TB test and doctor's physical, volunteering at school and the temple, Story-time at the Library with Katrina, and a bridal shower on Saturday (with the same bride that I made her wedding invitations.)
We had four more meetings the next week, as the kids worked on the skit (which was hilarious! They did a great job!), the structure and practiced their spontaneous responses. The skit was changed to be a grandmother who gets visited by her grandchildren. She is wearing a wide brimmed hat with a boa wrapped around it and a balsa wood structure sticking off the top. The kids ask her about it and she tells them about being in an OM competition when she was young and how there was wax dripping from the candle chandeliers onto the dirt floor of the gym and that her structure help 20 cement blocks and that she was so proud of it, she put it on her hat. The kids like the idea and decide to go put an OM team together. The skit is very clever and I was really proud of the kids for coming up with such a great idea!
At this point we tried to find more balsa wood so that we could test the one that they had made and build another one. We quickly discovered that there was no balsa wood in Fresno to be had. Everyone either did not carry it, or was out of it and wouldn't be getting any in until the following week. We started recycling as much of the wood as we could. (Thankfully when the structure broke, it broke at the glue points, rather than the wood splintering.)
During the following week we widened our search for balsa wood to the Central Valley. We made over fifty phone calls to all different types of stores and even to the colleges. No one had any or they were out. We could order it online, but by this time, the shipping would be $60 for a $20 box of balsa wood. We also were still having trouble getting a gram scale. Everyone was telling us that everyone else was getting it, when in fact, no one was getting it.
In the meantime, I was running around picking up photos from the lady I scrapbook for, voting, baking several loaves of bread and preparing dough for the Activity Days activity where we taught the girls to make bread, and making 150 invitations and announcements for our friends who are adopting the four kids. A friend of mine and I are throwing a huge family shower for them later in the month. There was also volunteering, Super Readers and Story-time.On Friday I was downtown turning in my packet, and getting fingerprinted. I was told that I would need an hour to turn in my packet, but after fifteen minutes of waiting, it took only three minutes to turn in my information. As it turns out it was a good thing that I had the extra time, as it took me another 45 minutes to find the place where I was being fingerprinted. I started out in the right direction, but the area I was heading toward didn't look all that great, so I went into a Sheriff's office to check, and they sent me in the completely wrong direction, and then two sets of wrong directions later, I was finally back where I was supposed to be in the area that didn't look all that great. (I won't even go into all the details of the ridiculousness I had to endure to even get the fingerprinting appointment. I swear, the county whines and complains about not having enough foster parents and people who will adopt, but then they treat you like they do. No wonder!)
Also, while I was downtown, I turned in Rebecca's letter of intent to participate in the Young Writer's Faire. Amanda is doing a non-fiction book on Jupiter at her school, and when Rebecca saw the form and saw that 2nd graders could participate, she wrote a story as well. No one at her school is participating, so I rushed around getting her teacher to sign the paperwork and I took it to the County Education office myself on the day of the deadline.
On Saturday I attended the CPR-First Aid class. It was good because a lot of things have changed since the last time I took a class. The biggest problem of the day came in the timing. I have been eating a lot differently lately. I eat five small meals a day instead of three. I usually eat at 7, 10, noon, 3 and at 6. I had assumed that there would be breaks during the CPR class, but there were never any breaks, and I didn't want to pull food out in the middle of class, so I didn't end up eating my 10am "meal". By the time lunch rolled around, I was VERY hungry. I walked over to a Taco Bell and got two chicken tacos. Normally, I would have only bought one, but I was very hungry. I walked back to the campus and then sat down and ate the two tacos and an orange. I went back up to class, and within minutes I started to feel very sick. I fanned myself for a few minutes, but then I had to get up and leave the classroom. A janitor came by and asked if I was okay. He asked if I needed him to get someone and I said that ironically I was in a first aid class. After a few minutes of being outside I felt better so I went back into the classroom. This lasted only a few more minutes and I was back outside. This time one of the ladies from the class came out to see if I was alright. It was about then that I got sick in the trash can and she ran to the restroom and got me some paper towels. The teacher came out to see if I was okay, and I explained to them about my eating schedule and that I had just eaten too much. The problem now was that I hadn't eaten anything for five hours and then had thrown up what I had eaten in the meantime. The teacher had a juice box, so I was able to get my blood sugar level back up to where it needed to be.
After class Kevin and the girls picked me up and we drove across town to a birthday party that Katrina had been invited to. We geocached for a while and then had dinner. By then my stomach was back to normal and I felt much better.
The next Monday the kids had off from school so we had another meeting at our house and we got most of a structure built, but we were out of balsa wood, so we had to stop. On Tuesday I took matters into my own hands and called both the pharmacies in town and asked them if they had a gram scale. No on both counts. So, I went to the police station to see if they had a gram scale we could use. They did have one, but they said that it was "contaminated", so we couldn't use it. I went to the post office, but all they had is a scale that measures ounces. So, I did some conversions and 18 grams is roughly 0.6 ounces. They weighed our structure and it weighed 0.8 ounces. What! It wasn't even finished yet, and it was over-weight! Yikes! We had a super-dooper spontaneous practice at the Junior High School that afternoon after school and so I told the kids on the structure team that we had to have an extra meeting the next day after school. Also, I got a call from the school that they had found a gram scale at the high school, so I rushed over to pick it up.
The next day I was in Fresno and I was nearby Hobby Town. They had already told us three times that they did not have any balsa wood and weren't going to be getting any in until the next day. I went in anyway and I found seven pieces of balsa wood. They were not the best quality, but hey! It was actual pieces of balsa wood! The structure team met that afternoon and we weighed the structure. It was 24 grams. We weighed the seven pieces of balsa wood and they weighed 17.75 grams. We knew then that they had to build a structure that was made with only seven sticks of balsa wood. With only three more days to the competition they went back to the drawing board. They came up with an idea, and we built it as much as we could with the scraps that were left over from the previous structures.
On Thursday they built it, weighed it (17.9 grams) and then cut all the pieces to make a final one for the competition. On Friday night we were going to get together to assemble it.
During the week I actually told Rebecca's teacher that I couldn't come in to volunteer as I needed a few minutes to just sit and breathe. That morning I went over to our friends' house. They had been given foster custody of the kids that weekend and my friend was having a hard time dealing with the suddenness of four kids. Katrina played with the kids and she got to talk to me about all that she was feeling and dealing with. I know that it is not going to get easier for them, but they will get stronger.
Friday I worked on last minute stuff that I had been putting off for weeks- shopping, taxes, etc.- and then at 12:30 I went on the Super Readers field trip with Rebecca to the Cat Haven. This is a cool field trip. I went on it with Amanda when she was in Super Readers. The Cat Haven is on the way to Kings Canyon National Park and is built purely for educational purposes. They have tigers, leopards, jaguars, lynx and others. It is a great field trip and I was glad I could spend the time with Rebecca as I had been focusing so much on Amanda's OM group that I wanted some one-on-one time with Rebecca. (See all of the Cat Haven pics HERE.)When we got home the kids in the structure group came over at 7:00pm and we started putting together the structure. We got it all put together and weighed it and it weighted 22 grams. We just about dropped over! No way! It was 10pm and we were overweight! Arg! We could not figure out how an identical structure could weigh more, so we took parts of the one that weighed the 17.9 grams and put pieces from the just built one on and we finally got a mix-matched structure that weighed 17.6 grams. Whew! We were not able to test it, as we had no more balsa wood and no more time to build another one. So, at 10:45pm the night before the competition, the kids went home and we tried to get as much sleep as we could.
I woke up at about 5:30am in a panic because we had not measured the height the night before. Thankfully it was 8.25" tall! Whew! We got going at about 7:00am and drove down to Hanford. Karina, one of the Team members was making our sign for us, and she did a great job! We had decorated the sign with photos of the kids putting the structures together over the past weeks. We registered and the Team went to the weigh-in. Their structure was compliant in every way! It was neat, as when the High School team walked by the kids whispered to me, "Mrs. Nehring. We already tried that shape and it didn't work!" It was great to see them have gone through this process, testing and trying and learning.
We watched the school that we were competing against, and they had big chicken and pig costumes for their skit, and their structure held 5 lbs. before it disintegrated. The kids were a little worried, but I told them they had worked hard and that they shouldn't worry. The High School team went and their structure crushed as soon as the crusher board hit it.
Then it was our turn. The Team did their skit and then the structure team went out to the tester, They put the structure on and then the golf balls and then the crusher board. As they set the crusher board on, the structure leaned to one side. As soon as it touched the tester's pole, the judges told them they had to correct it. They took the crusher board off and tried again. The same thing kept happening over and over, but they held their cool and kept working at it until the time ran out. Their structure never held weight, but it never broke either. (I can't tell you how hard it is to sit in the coach's chair, not being able to say anything, not being able to help in any way. I really think they need to change the title from coach to supervisor or captain or something, as we are not allowed to actually coach them!)
We had a break for lunch and then we were able to go see the other team from the same class and watch their problem (they had to build a vehicle and perform certain tasks with it), then the kids went to do their spontaneous problem. When they came out they said they were not allowed to tell us about it until after the World Competition in June, but they said they felt good about it.
There was four hours between the competition and the Awards Assembly, so we went and did some geocaching. We found twelve caches and while we were taking a photo of one, our camera decided that it was through taking pictures and it quit. We couldn't even get it to close for the longest time. We used a lifeline :- ) and made a phone call to Mom (in Alaska!) to see if there was a Circuit City in Hanford so we could go get a new camera, but the closest one was in Visalia and we knew we couldn't get there and back in enough time.
We went back to the Awards Assembly and we found out that we had won second place! The Team ran down to get their silver medals and they were thrilled! They had worked sooooo hard and we were so proud of them! First and second place in each division are invited to go on to the State Competition in April. I borrowed another parent's camera to take photos of them receiving their medals. The Team beat their competition in the Style points (for our skit and for our sign) and they did MUCH better than the other team in the Spontaneous! Since the other team’s structure held one 5 lb. weight, they got all the Structure points, which put them in the lead. The most any team's structure held that day was 15 pounds, so realistically, with a few modifications, we could actually hold out own at the State Competition.
After the competition we headed for home. We stopped in Selma and had dinner at Denny's and while we ate, Kevin and I talked about the camera. We have been looking at a camera that we have really wanted for several months, but we were hoping to buy it because we wanted to, not because we HAD to. We decided to go to Circuit City in Fresno. We were going to see if there was a small camera we could buy to tide us over. We went looking and most of them were right around the $300 range. Well, the camera we have been looking at for months was on sale for $350, so we decided that now was the time to get it.
On Sunday, Kevin and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary! With the competition and next week's family shower, etc., we really don't have any time to go out to celebrate, so we called the camera our anniversary present to each other! Next year we will make it our "lucky" anniversary and plan to make sure we get to go out and enjoy it, just the two of us. We did get a picture of us though, with our new camera! :- )
See all of the pics from the Odyssey of the Mind structure construction and competition HERE.
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