The Bullard Elementary Odyssey of the Mind team consisting of the fifth graders: Ashley Jais, Carlie Wilson, Nick Watson, Gerry Parkinson, Hannah Forehand and Reese Shipman (pictured above) are very proud, happy and excited as are their parents and the team coaches, Lyn and Shawn Shipman.  They have been working hard all school year to prepare for competition.  Odyssey of the Mind is a creative thinking program that allows youth ranging from Kindergarten to college from Georgia, and across the U.S. and 25 other countries to compete against others using their problem-solving skills.  The students are required to develop their own theme, script, characters and props to solve one of six problems in 8 minutes or less.  The problem this team chose to base their performance on was called Ooh-Motional Vehicle.  "(It) requires teams to design, build, and drive a vehicle that will travel a course where it will encounter three different situations. The vehicle will display a different human emotion for each encounter and one will cause it to travel in reverse. The team will create a theme for the presentation that incorporates the vehicle and the different emotions. The emphases will be on the technical risk-taking and creativity of the vehicle's engineering for travel and change of emotional appearance."  At the Regional Competition held in Flowery Branch, GA on March 3, 2012, the team placed 2nd which sent them to the State Competition.  In Columbus, Georgia on April 14th, this team once again was victorious, bringing home the 1st place trophy and will compete at the World's competition at the end of May, which will be held in Ames, Iowa. Check out www.georgiaodyssey.org for more information on this program.