Destination Imagination is a global community that believes that when students have the freedom to grow and collaborate without boundaries, their confidence explodes and the world opens up to them in new ways.

Destination Imagination enables this transformation by providing students with challenges rooted in STEAM subjects that inspire students to create unique solutions through the use of the creative process. Every year, students create their solutions to the challenges given and compete in competitions against other DI teams. Students also participate in an instant challenge where they have just a few minutes to use their imagination and the creative process to solve a challenge using only the materials provided.

The Jaffrey Grade School Lucky Pancake Chambions team (spelled this way intentionally as an acronym for all of the team members’ last names) included Isabelle Moorman, Eli Crespo, Abby Bonzagni, Riley Hawlk and Luke Aylott. 

The Lucky Pancake Chambions participated in Destination Imagination's In Motion challenge -- a fine arts challenge that requires teams to create and present a story inspired by a work of visual art. Teams need to reimagine the work of visual art as performance art and design and create a piece of kinetic art that includes movement, and include a static character and a dynamic character. 

The Lucky Pancake Chambions team chose an orange fantasy fox created by Russian artist Evegeny Hontor. Using this sculpture, the team created a story about a hunter (Eli) trying to capture the fox after the fox destroyed his garden. Foxy (Isabelle) makes friends with a dolphin named Coral (Abby), a cat named Stormy (Riley) and a piranha plant named Peter P. Plant (Luke) along the way, and they work together to rescue Foxy after she gets captured.

The animals rescue Foxy by using teamwork and teaching the hunter about the great qualities of foxes and how beneficial they are. At the end of their story, the hunter changes his mind and does not want to capture foxes any more. The students created a puppet as their reimagined art, a slingshot/launcher to add movement for the kinetic art component and used other props throughout their performance by creating a cage, costumes, marshmallows and a lock and key.

The students competed at the Amherst regional competition on March 9 and came in first place for their category. The Lucky Pancake Chambions have been hard at work preparing for the next competition. The students have been making changes to their script, creating an additional puppet and enhancing their props. The states competition is in Goffstown on April 6.  If the team advances after the states competition, the next competition is the global finals in Kansas City.

In addition to the Lucky Pancake Chambions, Jaffrey Grade School’s Different Cookies team led by manager Alexis Compton included Timothy Moorman, Ashlynn Merling, Joey Nagle and Rutvij Bakhade. 

The Different Cookies participated in Pinball Heroes, the technical challenge. Teams had to design and build a pinball system that a soccer ball could move through and interact with three machine modules for as long as possible. On top of building a pinball machine, teams had to create and present an action/adventure story about a hero that goes on an extraordinary mission. 

The Different Cookies team created an action-filled script narrated by Rutvij about a hero named PB (Timothy) and his sidekick Minty (Darcey) who go on a magical journey to find the magical item the Golden Cookie and keep it safe. The villain Dr. Brownie (Joey) tries everything in his power to stop the hero. He even forces his evil minion Blossom (Ashlynn) to do things.

The hero gets on a dangerous path made out of cookies. The path he had to take breaks down, and he goes by a volcano that is spouting cookie dough. At the bottom of the volcano is the giant pinball machine. The hero has to play the pinball machine to get past; if the hero succeeds, a magic door will open up and he can go inside to find the Golden Cookie. The hero has to get away with the Golden Cookie and pass the Evil Villain. The Different Cookies placed fifth at the regional competition. 

Madelyn Grierson is the fourth- and fifth-grade special education teacher and case manager at Jaffrey Grade School, and coach for one of Jaffrey Grade School’s Destination Imagination teams.