Here at Vidya Valley, we value every one of our students’ qualities and give them platforms to showcase their unique talents, even apart from the sports field. An annual event that is looked forward to by the children is the Interhouse Creativity Competition, in which the senior grades of classes 6 to 10 take part in to win points for their houses- Jaguar, Cheetah, Puma and Sher.
This year, the competition was based on the making of mystery rooms. Each house had to design two rooms and form solving teams, to visit the rooms of the other houses. The participants had a week to come up with ingenious clues and decorations related to the topic that was given to them. The topics included plots revolving around hacking, where children interested in coding helped their house create their own AI software for one of the clues, and a Mt Everest expedition, where a humongous structure of the mountain was created using recycled plastic bottles.
While the prefects of each house worried about points and deductions, the younger students were delighted to contribute ideas and artwork. The juniors watched the seniors in awe, taken back at how fast they were working and how they came together to work as one team.
Each house had to create one room for the 6th and 7th solving teams, and one for 8th, 9th and 10th. There were two building teams of ten people each and two solving teams of six each, per house. Due to a limited amount of time, the teams had to divide their work among themselves quickly, which proved to be difficult, as the juniors hung around in the corridors, begging for a chance to spray paint one of the props. All sorts of skills were required in order to plan out such a huge ordeal, and many timid students stepped up and gave considerable contributions in the fields of artwork, tech design, critical thinking and many more.
The final day was on the 2nd of August, 2026. A period of one and a half hours was given to the building teams to set up their rooms, and then the solving commenced. The time limit for solving the room was approximately thirty minutes. The solving teams bickered and quarrelled, but managed to pull through and solve all of the rooms. The participants were judged on the basis of room design, complexity of the clues, time taken to solve, and sustainability of the materials used. As the children who were not participating chewed nervously at their nails, as they watched their classmates rush by holding rolls of tape and yards of ribbon, the judges visited every room for the final evaluation and the deciding of the results.
The results were announced after the solving was completed, but not before every house got the opportunity to present what they had worked on to the rest of the school. Although the losing teams may have left with rather dimmed spirits, every single participant learned about the values of teamwork and innovation. The Creativity Competition brings out the hidden talents in children that they perhaps did not know they even had, and gives them the confidence to speak up and contribute towards their house.
– Adhira Magesh
(Editorial Team)
