Mind Lab - The Mind Olympics

Imagine 26 kids in a huge P.E. room, crouded with other students, families, and teachers, playing board games for hours and hours in an amazing, haunting silence. Such a silence in which you think twice even on how to breath so that you won't break their tense concentration.

As a teacher I know that I would never expect such a scenario, that includes playing, games, and over 100 people, mainly kids to happen in a school. And yet, that is exactly what you could see happening on April 19th, 2008, at one of the schools located in the beautiful village of Valsugana, Trentino, in Strigno.

Last year, the Istituto Comprensivo of Strigno e Tesino was the first primary school in Italy to take on the exciting advanture of the new educational method, the Mind Lab program.

The Mind Olympics is one of the most spectacular and involving extracurricular activities offered in the Mind Lab Program. This year, 27 giocatori had the chance of competing for the title of the best board game players of Italy. The four thinking games that kids play during the Olympics all around the world are: Abalone, Quoridor, Checkers and Octi.

The winners of each game will have the opportunity to represent Italy in the International Mind Olympics which, this year, will take place in the historic city of Istanbul.

The members of the Italian team will be: Daniela Avgustini (Abalone), Hao Wu (Octi), Pamela Stamo (Quoridor), Giovanni Zanetti (Dama).

The main objectives of the Mind Olympics tournament are to bring kids, families and teachers together, aiming for a common goal: to resuscitate the culture of thinking games, as well as to teach kids a real sportmanship, nice manner, and a great fair-play in a healthy competition environment.

I am sure that I am not the only one who would say how amazed I was by what I saw at the tournament. The kids at the competition demonstrated an immense commitment and respect to the whole tournament, and showed great appretiation towards each other for the effort each of them made. They all put great enthusiasm into their achievement, even though they knew that as in any competition, there would be winners and loosers.

We would like to express our warm congratulations to the winners, to all the other players who participated in the tournament, to their teachers, who continuouly prepared them during the whole year ,as well as to the rest of the school stuff, who gave an amazing support and helped organize this beautiful tournament.

Let us just say this: we feel that we are the unexpected winners of this tournament! We experienced even more than what we could have ever imagined: a great competition, an incredible discipline, and an immense sense of pride of all the competitiors ! For us, it was simply an unbelievable day!

Thanks kids ! Lots of luck, and see you in Istanbul!

Check out these pictures from this lovley event:

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The Results