A storytelling-and-creative-problem-solving program — our teams are for kids in grades 4–7, though the competition itself runs wider.
Destination Imagination — DI for short — is a global creative-problem-solving program where a team of kids picks one open-ended challenge, then spends the season designing, building, and performing their own solution. At the tournament, the team also takes on an Instant Challenge — a timed task they see for the first time on the day, solved in front of judges in a handful of minutes.
What makes DI distinct from most youth programs is a rule that runs deep into how teams work: the kids do the solving. Adults coach the process, but the team's solution — the script, the props, the build, the choices — has to come from the kids. Team Managers and parents can support, ask questions, and help with logistics, but they can't contribute ideas to the solution itself. That constraint is the program's pedagogy: every kid on the team owns the work because no adult is allowed to hand them an answer.
Three of the six 2026–27 competitive challenges are explicitly storytelling-driven, and even the engineering and science challenges require teams to wrap their solution in a story. If your kid likes telling stories, writing scenes, or thinking through characters as much as building or experimenting — DI 2026–27 is the right room. Our short list of likely picks leans into that:
Write a fable with non-human characters; bring it to life with natural materials and an animated prop.
Improvise a two-act story about a famous duo in a ridiculous situation, with a single prop and music.
Design and carry out a real community project, then present what you did as a story set in a video-game world.
Year-one scope: grades 4–7 — our choice, not the competition's limit. DI itself runs from early elementary through university, and its level bands are wider than our teams: we field an Elementary team from grades 4–5 and a Middle team from grades 6–7, each sitting inside DI's official bands. We keep our range tighter for two plain reasons: our capacity is small, and teams work better when the kids on them are close in age — a wide spread rarely serves the youngest or the oldest kids well. We'll likely form one team at each level if interest spans both bands. Each team's team in DI's vocabulary is what our robotics program would call a crew — three to five kids working together. Our Elementary and Middle teams each pick independently from the short list above (or any of the six DI challenges, if a team wants something else).
October through March: Saturdays in the fall, Sundays from December on. Practices build intensity through fall, then run weekly through tournaments. Regional: Sat, March 13, 2027 in Jeffco. State: Sat, April 10, 2027 at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Teams advancing from state can go on to Global Finals in late May.
October–November: most Saturdays, 3–5pm.
December–March: most Sundays, 3–5pm, with longer sessions as tournaments approach. Exact dates are confirmed with families at team formation.
Sat Mar 13 (regional) and Sat Apr 10 (state, if advancing). Competition days; no separate practice that week.
Grades 4–7. One team per level band (Elementary 4–5, Middle 6–7), three to five kids per team. We need at least three committed kids at a level to form that team; if interest doesn't reach three at one level, we'll fold the kids into the other team if grade-eligible, or skip that level for the year.
Email brenton@steamhouse.club with interest or questions. We'll need to know your kid's grade level. Register by October 10 — capacity limited — so we can secure team numbers and challenge materials before the season builds. Volunteer parent Team Managers needed too; DI trains them, and steamHouse covers the background check.
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Fall runs every-other Saturday rather than weekly; teams take holiday weekends and school breaks off — no practice Thanksgiving weekend, over Jeffco Winter Break (late December through early January), MLK weekend, Presidents’ weekend, or Spring Break. November Saturdays (7, 14, 21) are all held as practice dates, but one of them will be adjusted or omitted — it’s the same Saturday our robotics crews’ FLL regional lands on, and that date isn’t set yet. *Mar 14, Mar 28, and Apr 4 are held as possible state-prep sessions — needed only if a team advances past regional, and not necessarily then. Exact practice dates are confirmed with families at team formation. Tournament details and schedules post at Colorado DI.
A typical Saturday session opens with the team checking in on what they finished last week and what's still open, then splits into the work — testing a build, running a scene, refining a community project — with Team Managers asking questions but never handing over answers. Every session includes Instant Challenge practice: quick, on-the-spot creative tasks the team will face at the tournament. By March, kids who started the season unsure of themselves get up at the regional tournament and run a scene they wrote, then walk into a separate room and solve an Instant Challenge in front of strangers.
That part is the program.$120 per kid, sliding scale. Pay less if that's what you can do; pay more if you want to help cover another family's spot. Payment due on enrollment by October 10. This covers the team's DI Team Number, Team Manager background check, Jeffco regional tournament fee, challenge materials, and shared supplies. (If tournament fees come in higher than expected, steamHouse absorbs the difference.) Email if cost is a concern — we'll work it out.
The commitment is real. We expect 90% attendance through the season, and that expectation is not arbitrary. DI is built on team decision-making — what challenge to pick, what the solution will be, who plays what role, what the story is — and team decisions are hard to hold when people are missing. A kid who's there 60% of the time costs the team more than four-tenths of a kid; choices the team made together have to be re-explained, re-decided, or paused. Families should join knowing this is the standard.
Two things worth saying up front, because we'd rather you know now than find out in October.
This is the Club's first year running DI. The program itself isn't new — it's been around for forty years with well-established Colorado teams — but it's new at steamHouse. We're going in carefully: a first team or two, experienced DI families and coaches in our corner, modest expectations for advancing past regionals in year one.
And — this one matters most — DI's rule that the kids own the solution is real, and the judges enforce it. If you're used to youth programs where parents help with the science fair project, the costume, the script, the build, DI will feel different from the inside. Coaches don't contribute ideas to the solution. Parents don't contribute ideas to the solution. The team does. We coach the process; we don't coach the answer. Families who can hold that posture get the most out of the program; families who can't tend to leave frustrated. Better to know now.
Register by October 10 — capacity limited. Tell us your kid's grade level and we'll talk about the season and whether the fit is right.
Email to join