Odyssey of the Mind

Dear Parents –

Does your child like to create, perform, build, invent or want to expand these skills? If YES, the Odyssey of the Mind program is the place for them.

In this venue, your child works with a team of other junior high students to come up with cool, innovative solutions that allow them to stretch their imagination, expand their skills and have a ton of fun.

Teams usually consist of 5-7 students who are interested in working on the same problem. The teams meet about once per week (as needed) to work on their problem and practice spontaneous problem solving, usually at the coach’s house or school. Some problems are more theatrical others technical, but all require creativity and have components of performance, design and construction.

Each team takes its solution to the State Competition held every Spring. If a team places 1^st or 2^nd at State, they receive a bid to the World Competition where teams from around the world (over 25 countries) come to the US to compete.

We started the program at the Elementary School two years ago, and have had teams place first at State and travel to the World competition each year. The experience of the World competition gives our students the added opportunity to not only present their solutions to a larger audience, but also interact with other students from around the world, see their solutions and participate in a variety of activities/events on a college campus.

Odyssey of the Mind or “OM” is a world-wide competitive program sponsored by NASA and Microsoft to help students develop creative thinking and problem-solving skills. Under the guidance of a coach (volunteer parent) students learn to work with each other as a team and take their creativity to new levels. This is an after school program at Prairie Grove.

Does this sound like something your child may enjoy? Then have them attend our Open Meeting on Monday, October 25^th immediately after school in the Junior High Art Room. We will be talking about this year’s problems and executing several Spontaneous Problems to let the kids get a feel for the program.

Please RSVP to Heidi @847.814.7856 or heidi@heidijessup.com by Friday, October 22^nd if you child will attend the Open Meeting on the 25^th so that we can make sure we have enough supplies and space.