A fifth grade team from Discovery Elementary School has won first place at the regional Destination Imagination “Operation Cooperation” challenge.

Held at Pacific Cascade School in Issaquah, on Saturday, Feb. 28, the Operation Cooperation challenge saw 58 teams from Washington schools competing in a variety of tasks that focused on technical design, construction, innovation, research, experimentation, theater arts, strategic planning and teamwork.

The Discovery team will now compete at the state level in Wenatchee, WA, in March.

Christopher Heitkamp, Vikram Ghangurde, Courtney Crocker, Andrew Blessington, and Ruby Outwater made up Discovery’s “Phive Phantastic Pharoahs” team, which was managed by Robert Heitkamp.

They had worked very hard over the past few months to design and construct two machines that travel and complete tasks.

The challenge required them to chose up to 12 tasks for the machines to complete cooperatively, and create a story about cooperation set in a nation other than their own.

Last year, a Discovery team won third place in the state round of the challenge.

Destination Imagination is volunteer-driven educational organization that aims to teach young people critical and creative thinking skills, as a complement to traditional education.

For more on Destination Imagination, visit www.idodi.org