By Elizabeth Dubrulle
Correspondent

The Sudden SerenDIpity Team from Maple Avenue Elementary School's Destination ImaginNation program is going to Knoxville for the global competition after qualifying at the state level. They need to raise about $8,000 for the trip. They.re asking for donations and will be having a yard sale on May 14 to help them reach their goal. On top row is, from left, Amanda Wills, team leaders Dianne and Roger Macon, and Molly Gross. In the middle are Julia Macon and Justin Poisson, and on the bottom are Mandy Waryasz and Joel Devoid. (Courtesy Photo)

Could Maple Avenue Elementary School be fostering the next Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison? Such a proposition may not be all that far-fetched, given a group of students. recent performance at a statewide competition that tested their abilities to solve problems quickly and creatively.

A team of six third- and fourth-graders from the school have been working together since November to master an educational challenge issued by Destination ImagiNation, a nonprofit organization that designed a national creative problem solving program.

The team now gets to travel to Tennessee to compete in the global finals at the end of May and are raising money for the trip.

Destination ImagiNation's goal, according to its Web site, is to help "kids build important, lifelong skills, such as problem solving, teamwork, and divergent thinking...understanding that there is more than one way to solve a problem."

In operation since 1983, Destination ImagiNation works with parents, teachers and school administrators to offer children a dynamic and exciting extracurricular activity with its series of challenges.

Schools around the country register teams that are entirely voluntary comprising five to seven students overseen by parent team managers, many of whom are either veterans of the Destination ImagiNation program themselves or have children who have participated in the past.

Maple Avenue's effort received strong support, not only from the school administration and parents, but also from the Parents and Faculty Together organization that routinely contributes to school activities.

This school year, Maple Avenue's Destination ImagiNation coordinator, Dianne Macon, organized four teams in November that then began meeting once or twice a week in the afternoons, evenings or on weekends until March. One team comprised of first- and second-graders participated just for fun and to get the hang of it, opting not to compete in the regional competition. They undertook a challenge called "More to the Story," in which they were expected to write, produce and perform an extended version of a favorite tale.

The other three teams of third- and fourth-graders were expected to meet a variety of challenges. One group, tackling the Radio DI challenge, created a radio broadcast story, complete with a required list of sound effects, an advertisement and a news segment. Another group, competing in the Dizzy Derby challenge, built a vehicle that could travel on a triangularshaped track by its own propulsion system, along with an accompanying story. The third group, testing themselves with the Sudden SerenDIpity challenge, designed and constructed an invention that could be transformed into another invention. One of the inventions had to perform some sort of technical function in three steps.

To complicate the tasks, all groups also completed a series of Instant Challenges that fell into one of three categories: verbal, involving some kind of wordplay; hands-on, necessitating the construction of an object from specific raw materials; or performance, mounting a skit; all in a limited amount of time.

"It really gets the kids to think on their feet in a creative way," said Macon, whose family has a long tradition of participating in Destination ImagiNation events.

Although parent involvement is crucial to the teams. success, Macon is quick to point out that parents provide no creative or technical input.

"The kids do it all themselves," she said.

All three teams competed against other Destination Imagi- Nation teams in the area at a regional meet held at Goffstown High School in mid-March. From that competition, the team competing in the Sudden SerenDIpity challenge scored high enough to continue on to the state meet in Nashua on April 9. Once again victorious, the team now has the opportunity to travel with 32 other top-ranking teams from New Hampshire to represent the state at Destination ImagiNation's Global Finals at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on May 25 to 28, where they will go up against roughly 1,500 other teams.

The Sudden SerenDIpity group's winning entry was a skit that centered around the story of a potato chip-loving mouse whose potato chip cart proves too large to get through the door of his supply shed. Other characters in the skit help the mouse get the cart through the door by constructing the cart's axle as a telescoping mechanism, thereby allowing it to contract and squeeze through the tight space. Once inside the supply shed, the characters transform the cart once again, this time into a grabber so that they can reach bags of chips stored in high places.

As exciting as this opportunity is, though, the team will need to embark on some serious fundraising to be able to participate in the Global Finals. To cover the costs of travel, room, and board for the team's six members and the team managers, the group must raise about $8,000 in the next few weeks. The team plans to undertake two fundraising events: a letter campaign to businesses and organizations in the area asking for donations and a large, multifamily yard sale.

The yard sale will take place on May 14 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Maple Avenue School. Families are welcome to rent a space in which to display their offerings or they can donate items outright to the Destination ImagiNation table for resale.