destination imagination Archives

With Summer just around the corner, many families are planning trips to the Disney Parks. The last time I was at Walt Disney World, I noticed what a big deal pin trading is now. Many kids (and adults!) had lanyards holding Disney themed pins around their necks, and they were trading them with Disney employees and fellow park goers.

Although my kids haven’t been to Disney when they were old enough to pin trade, they do participate in a lot of pin trading through Destination Imagination. At both the State and Global tournaments, there are hoards of kids gathered around trading pins and working on their negotiation skills.

We just got back from the Texas tournament yesterday, and Zack brought home a huge amount of pins to add to his Destination Imagination pin collection. As I was adding them into the book I made for him, I decided to show you the DIY Pin Trading Book I made for him last year, because it is working really well! You can buy pin trading books at our DI tournaments (and at Disney!), but I wanted to make my own that had some special features – and it was cheaper than purchasing one sold just for pin trading.

I bought a few things on Amazon to get started. The first thing I got was a zippered 3-ring binder that has a shoulder strap. It was important to me that Zack could carry around his pins on his own, and I wanted it to be zippered so that he wouldn’t lose pins when he was running around. The binder I bought him also has a zippered pocket on the front, which I wanted, too. This is the link to the exact binder I bought for him (Amazon affiliate link), but you may want to search some more on Amazon since there may be some different options now. This one was $17.99.

How to Create a DIY Pin Trading Book via MakelyHome.com

I also bought a few bulk sets of 9×12 black 2mm Foamies sheets. I’ve seen people use felt for page inserts, but they felt too flimsy for me. The Foamies sheets have some thickness to them, so they don’t feel like they are flopping around. I bought 2 packages of 10 sheets on Amazon (affiliate link), but again, check prices before you order. They were $6.41 a package when I ordered.

With my three-hole punch, I punched holes in the Foamies pages and inserted them into the binder. Depending on the size of the pins, we do anywhere from 6-10 pins on a page so that they don’t get too heavy and rip.

How to Create a DIY Pin Trading Book via MakelyHome.com

I like to keep his pins organized by type so that he can have a better idea of what he has. For example, these pins are from Regional tournaments that he has participated in.

How to Create a DIY Pin Trading Book via MakelyHome.com

I also ordered some rubber backs for the pins in his collection. Many of them had metal butterfly backs, but I was worried that they would scratch up the surface of the pins underneath them. It’s also always good to have extra backs on hand because your kids will probably lose some! He keeps extras in the zipper pocket on the front of his binder. I bought a package of 50 rubber pin backs on Amazon (affiliate link) for $5.99. We’ve actually gone through all of them, so I need to order some more.

How to Create a DIY Pin Trading Book via MakelyHome.com

We have now used all 20 pages of Foamies in his pin trading book, and they are so neat and organized! He loves looking through them, and I love that they aren’t all over the floor of his closet.

Do you or your kids have any trading pins? How to your store them and carry them around?

If you missed Part 1 of this series, please read it here.

When we last left our team of creative kids and their fearless (and tired) leaders, they had just won 1st place in the Capital Region Destination Imagination tournament and advanced to the Texas state competition. We had been so ready for DI to be over for the year, but that win completely excited the kids (and us) into getting ready for the state competition.

The kids had a little over a month to prepare for State. We immediately knew that we would go in as one of the top teams to beat. The Capital region is the largest region in the state, so we essentially had to beat the most other teams to qualify. The kids knew that they were now “kinda a big deal,” so they starting talking about going to Globals (the competition after state), They just knew they were going to go. As managers, we kept encouraging them to produce “Globals ready” work for the State competition, but it was more a ploy on our part to teach them that they can do really hard things if they are persistent. They upgraded their costumes, props and backdrop and made a new structure to take to competition.

We are really lucky to live in a school district that is supportive of DI. The district paid for our entry fee into the tournament, hotel accommodations for the kids and even gave them a stipend for food while we were gone. We rented a U-haul trailer (their backdrop was huge) and made our way to the state tournament in Dallas.

The State tournament was a completely different experience for us than our experience at Regionals. NOTHING seemed to go our way. The tournament site was pretty hectic and disorganized. The team performing before us had some kind of rules violation and ran like 30 minutes long, so our kids were standing in the sun in their costumes getting more and more anxious about what was going on. We saw other team managers repairing their team’s props and helping put on costumes (which is a HUGE no-no in DI). When we were trying to check-in, another team manager brought his team up behind us and they were singing and clapping so that our kids couldn’t hear instructions (I mean, c’mon). So many other teams were in the audience of our performance room that there wasn’t room for Tom and I to even sit down.

And then there was the performance itself.

Our team did just okay. Their performance was fine, but some little things went wrong. A sign was upside down. Zack’s hat was itching him, so he kept taking it off and throwing it on the floor. Our structure creaked and cracked like it was going to come crashing down. And our prop that was supposed to transform (I talked about that in Part I) just flat out didn’t work.

We came out of it feeling pretty bummed. The kids had worked so hard, but at this level, little mistakes are costly. They did very well in the Instant Challenge part of the competition, but we didn’t think they had done well enough to make up for the mistakes.

At the awards ceremony, we told them that we hoped they received a medal, but that we just didn’t think it was in the cards. We told them that win or lose, we were so proud at how much they had learned and accomplished. We told them that we couldn’t have asked any more from them and they gave it our all. We told them that they were bright and funny and we knew that they would accomplish big things. And we took one last team photo for the year.

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