Spontaneous Combustion

I have been coaching Odyssey of the Mind for years now, or so it seems. Sheila and I decided that a weekly practice session of hands-on spontaneous problems would be great practice for the kids this year, and they would love and cherish us for our efforts. Okay, I just made up that last part, but it sure would be nice if they cared even a little! We decided that since burnout was imminent, today would be our last day to meet. I could barely get the kids to settle down. As usual, all they wanted to know was what we brought them to eat (and drink). I laid it on the line for them...i.e you can have a fabulous long-term problem presentation, but if you can't focus for the 5 minutes a spontaneous problem takes YOU WON'T WIN!
I don't think they paid attention to a word I said, but I have hopes that some of our advice from the last few months has sunk in. (My problem is that while I can sometimes read people, I can never tell what a kid is thinking.)
Its a good thing that it at least was amusing to watch the kids try to wrap a frying pan, floppy disk, 4 pencils, 3 golfballs, wastebasket, ladle, 2 plastic glasses, 2 rubber balls and 2 pieces of cardboard with just 7 sheets of copy paper. And it was gratifying that all 3 teams eventually figured out that they could put everything in the wastebasket and wrap it to get the most points. I was still a little disappointed by the level of teamwork...but I guess maybe my expectations are higher than 10-12 year olds can meet.
Now all we have to do is get the long term problems ready to go...just 3 weeks left!