The annual battle between the Starburst and Skittles teams heated up on Nov. 22 as Wantagh Middle School hosted the eighth grade Olympics. The annual pre-Thanksgiving event focuses on teamwork as students take part in a variety of competitions to earn points. 

There was a paper airplane toss in which students had about 10 minutes to design and build before going into the hallway to fly their creations. In the M&Ms challenge, they had to use a straw to move the candy from the desk to a cup, and whichever team went down the line quickest was the winner. 

In blind artist, students got prompts and had to draw it on the board while blindfolded, trying to get their teammates to guess. There was also the blind land mines competition. As one student moved across the floor while blindfolded, his or her partner had to talk them through to avoid stepping on the pieces of paper that represented the land mine. Giant Jenga had teams competing to keep their towers from falling, and students learned more about their favorite faculty in a guess-that-teacher Kahoot game. There was also cornhole and dodgeball.

Each student participated in three events throughout the morning. Science teacher Christen Bellucci, who organized the eighth grade Olympics, said that every eighth grader got to take part in a variety of competitions. 

There are two teams in eighth grade – cohorts of students who have the same teachers for their core subject classes. One team was Starburst and the other was Skittles for the competition. The Olympics allowed students to interact with peers and teachers not on their teams as they met for the events. 

At the end of the day, the entire eighth grade came together in the auditorium to learn the winners of the different competitions and to earn bonus points with trivia questions about their teachers.