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My Odyssey of the Mind team is off and running. I am sharing coaching responsibilities with a fantastic co-coach and we have seven eighth graders - most of them with State and World Tournament experience. They are doing the tech problem this year and are required to build a Rube Goldberg style contraption and incorporate it into a skit. We took them to theMuseum of Life and Science in Durham on Saturday and they spent an hour in the Contraption Room building one. They were focused and showed great teamwork. And they had a blast. This will be my last year coaching - next year my youngest will be in high school and they will self coach. It was taken an enormous amount of time, mental bandwidth, and food for those teenage bottomless pits over the past five years but has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. Bittersweet. But I still have four months to the regional tournament!
Because it's Odyssey of the Mind season! We are going to tournament in just a little over a week. I love it! I hate it! I live for it and I might die from it if I don't get more sleep. I have a fantastic middle school team again! I love these kids and love to see them grow and change, become brave and funny. I will post pictures after the tournament.
Also - I am very very pleased to announce that I am now represented by the fantastic Maggie Byer-Sprinzeles! Yes! We are off to a fantastic start already.
...and - The March 2010 issue of Highlights For Children is out. I did the cover art!
3 Comments on What's new and why I'm not blogging, last added: 2/25/2010
Hi Holli - It's all because of you! I contacted Maggie after I read your interview on Escape From Ill Isle. I have been so impressed with her and her group of artists. And I am tickled to be associated with you!
I just completed several long months of heavy deadlines and had some time on my hands to do what I wanted. This isn't always very good for my family since I tend to be pretty determined and focused which means I am essentially gone. But my down-time and the beginning of our new OM season coincided. I have been an Odyssey of the Mind coach for several years and am always so excited to start up with a new team of kids and a new challenge every year (links to previous posts here and here). Part of my job as coach is to get them to work together to build innovative ideas. Being me, I thought some sort of visual presentation would be best. Good gracious I couldn't have just stood up in front of them and told them! I started with the idea that a PowerPoint presentation might be kind of cool. I drew out a few little doodles. Ten hours, three computers and five programs later I had a pretty rockin' little one-minute slide show presentation - with sound, okay. So it was overkill. The kids watched it, liked it, maybe got the message. I had a truly great odyssey of my own learning how to make PowerPoint squeak and laughed myself silly when I got some of the sound in. But, being me, I couldn't leave it at that. I spent another several frustrating/engaging/exciting hours converting it to Windows Movie Maker and then uploading it to YouTube. The animation is really rough, okay. The soundtrack I ended up using is so canned and cliche. If I had planned on making an animated short from the start I wouldn't have ever used PowerPoint in the first place (what a clunky mess that is) but I never planned on making an animation from the start. I was just going to scold some kids to listen to each other - right?
0 Comments on Crazy things I do when I have the time as of 1/1/1900
It's gorgeous out today - warm, sunny, breezy. Time to open the windows, grab a rag, and see what kind of crud has accumulated on top of everything. The first thing I noticed was this blog. It's dusty and a bit smudged in places. It's time to clean it up, touch up the paint, and get it running smoothly again.
What I've been doing the last few months:
I've been working, silly. I finished another of the fantastic math books by Doris Fisher and Dani Sneed for Sylvan Dell Publishing. My Half Day is about fractions and is crazier than ever. It has been a riot to do these books. They are fun and funny but are curriculum connected and full of ways to extend the learning through a For Creative Minds section at the back of every book too. All good stuff.
I did the art for a poster that will be given away at the IRA Convention in Atlanta by Highlights For Children. They are sending me to Atlanta as well to hang out in their booth and sign too. I will also be in the Sylvan Dell booth where they will have pre-release copies of My Half Day. Drop me a line and let me know if you will be in Atlanta during the conference May 4 - 8th and we can hook up!
I've been coaching two Odyssey of the Mind teams! These are competitive creative teams consisting of seven kids. They have to write, choreograph, perform, build sets, costumes, design and build devices all by themselves that solve a particular problem in just an eight minute performance. They use power tools. They paint stuff - well everything in sight actually. Duct tape is used by the case. And all in my garage. Oy, my garage. Help me now! But most importantly they become brave, use ingenuity, team work, and dedication to make magic. We go to tournament in just six days. It is one of the things I like best - guiding kids to do the impossible with creativity and humor. It's all super-secret before tournament but I will post more later on the incredible things these kids have created.
Other things - Our new web site should be launched in a week or so depending on what the web-master/husband has planned.
I've finally updated most of my images to Children's Illustrators dot com. I was the featured artist last week and saw some good results already.
I'll be involved in the CarolinasSCBWI conference in Durham again this fall. Mark your calendars for September 19-21.
Okay - I'm getting winded. Out of shape. Flabby. More tomorrow...
0 Comments on Spring Cleaning! as of 1/1/1900
Paige Keiser said, on 3/11/2008 8:14:00 PM
Hi Karen! Thanks so much for dropping by my blog and leaving such a nice comment--it really made me smile! Your illustrations here are incredible as usual!
This came down the wire at web4lib and was too useful not to share. Library Related Conferences, from now until 2015 or so. Also this year’s past conferences. Great resource.
that’s funny, I just ran across this list last week and thought “wow, there’s a variant of my last name I’ve never seen.” I mean, as well as thinking that this is a neat service she’s doing.
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Love the new site!