Friday, March 30, 2012

Bells Will Be Ringing

Earlier this week, I posted about my issue trying to figure out where I saw a phrase about falling objects that may or may not be trees. Many of my kind bloggy friends ventured forth with guesses and suggestions. Alas, I have still not located the source of that specific phrase, but the search rang a bell for my father and his girlfriend who reminded me today about another spin on the noise a tree makes (or not) when it falls in the forest.

For several years, Son-Two participated in Odyssey of the Mind. For those unfamiliar with it, it is basically a creativity competition with regional, state, and world levels. At competition, along with the Long-Term Problem, which the teams have been working on for weeks or months in advance, there is the Spontaneous portion, which is basically the kids being as creative as possible on the spot. Some of the Spontaneous problems are brain teasers, some are physical problems, some are some weird combination of both. 

To prepare for Spontaneous, there are sample problems that the team works on together while preparing their Long-Term Problem. It was during one of these practice sessions that the following question was posed to Son-Two's team: "Why did the man run screaming from the forest?"

Son-Two's answer: "Because a tree fell right in front of him and he didn't hear a sound."

12 comments:

  1. I coached OM teams for parts of sixteen years. We used to conduct fabricated Spontaneous Question sessions, including having the kids make up questions and give responses to them. OM promoted a lot of very useful higher level thinking skills, and not just for GATE kids.

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    1. Son-Two participated for five years, Daughter-Only for one. I think it's an excellent program. I was always astounded by the creativity and motivation of the kids and the commitment of the coaches, not to mention the program organizers.

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  2. That is funny! I'd run screaming too!

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    1. Makes you wonder if the scream made a sound. :)

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  3. That'd be quite..quite scary I admit.

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    1. It certainly would. I personally found it a little scary that Son-Two could come up with that so quickly. I suppose it's turned out okay so far though, in that Son-Two has used his quick, creative thinking mostly for good rather than for evil. So far. ;)

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  4. Your kids sound almost as smart as you.

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    1. Oh, Jewels, he's way smarter. Just ask him. ;)

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  5. Oh yeah, OM teams were common around here for our kids. RR, who was teaching science and/or being an administrator, coached for several years, primarily for Sonny Boy's team, At least twice his team when to the state finals and one year they went on to the national competition in Washington DC. I stayed out of the way.

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    1. Like I said to Mark, I really loved the program. It's not the most spectator-friendly thing, but it's great for the kids participating.

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  6. Argh. Blogger ate my comment. I think your Son-Two may share a bit of your sense of humor?

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    1. I'm not sure why Blogger has been such an ass lately about sending regular commenters comments to "Spam," but it sure is annoying. ;)

      Son-Two and I do share that sort of humor. It makes for some interesting conversations.

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