In an all-out bash for the Destination Imagination competition, four teams from Summit Elementary School and Woodland Park Middle School are off to the international competition this month.

The four, with a fifth team, first took the South Metro Regional Destination Imagination competition in February.  On a STEAM roll, four teams won the state competition in March on projects that incorporated science, technology, engineering, art and math.

In the global competition in Kansas City, Mo. May 21-25, the four teams will represent the Woodland Park School District and the state of Colorado.  The students range in age from the fourth through the sixth grades.

“The opening ceremony will be like the mini-Olympics,” said Donna Frick, who leads the DI competition for the Gifted and Talented program  at Summit. “For the kids, it’s about the experience.”

The four teams won prizes in the science, improvisational and two in the fine arts categories.

 Last week, a team of fourth and fifth graders highlighted the intricacies of their project where they placed first in the fine arts category.

“We created an origin story with a superhero and a super villain,” said Jaxson DiMenza, who played the hero as a pencil manufactured by the Doodle Company. 

But Ember Reynolds had other ideas. Playing the villain, Reynolds was the eraser, with the intention of wiping out school schedules, and independent reading assignments.

The story takes place in the Doodle pencil factory where sound effects include a bell that signals the shift change at the factory as well as those that signal an approaching thunderstorm, all done on a laptop computer.

“The students do everything themselves,” Frick said.

That “everything” includes designing and making their own costumes in addition to learning about stage makeup. Audrey Roynon, for instance, learned how to sew from her mom, and created a skirt and a t-shirt with a logo.

For the four team members, there’s a cost to being so smart, so inventive and technologically savvy, a $22,000 registration cost for the four teams. While they have $8,000 to date, they are hoping donations will make up the remainder.

As far as transportation, lodging and food, the parents are not only driving – 18 drivers – but are picking up the additional costs.

“People are coming from China, Europe, the islands, for instance,” Frick said. “These kids will interact with students from all over the world.”