Today was the county spelling bee. There were 26 kids that competed for a chance to win a spot in the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The children who competed ranged from a seven year old second grader to a 13 year old eighth grader. To be able to compete in the spelling bee the student had to have won the spelling be in his/her school. I thought the bee was only open to 4th-8th graders, but somehow there were a couple of 2nd and 3rd graders in there. Some of the kids were so tiny and so cute! Some of them were bigger than Brian! Regardless, they were all great spellers and they all received a lot of praise for making it to this level.
Here's Chase just before the spelling bee began this morning. He told me that he was a little nervous, but he seemed calm and confident to me.
This picture was taken during the practice round. The parents were only allowed to take photos during the practice round because they didn't want us disturbing the kids. Chase's practice round word was STOIC. He spelled S T O I K ... but thankfully it was the practice round. About 75% of the kids got their practice round words wrong. The purpose was the teach them how to work the microphone and what questions they were allowed to ask. They were allowed to ask:
"Can you repeat the word?"
"Will you use the word in a sentence please?"
"What is the definition?"
"What is the language of origin of the word?"
During the first round 14 of the 26 kids were eliminated. Chase made it through by correctly spelling the word CANDIDATE. By the time the kids had registered, learned all of the rules, practiced one round, and gone through a round we had already been there well over an hour. They gave the kids a short break. This was nice because Chase was able to come visit us in the audience and saw that his teacher had come to watch him. His teacher came to sit with us and we all gave Chase words of encouragement and advice.
The next round was another big elimination round. By the time it was over there were only four kids left. Oh, and Chase wasn't one of them :( His word? PSALM. He thought the announcer said SOLEMN. You can contest the judge's ruling on that basis, but when Chase was at the microphone he had asked the announcer to define the word and then he still misspelled it. On that basis they think he should have been able to figure out it was PSALM instead of SOLEMN so he was out.
He wasn't upset at all. We are all proud of him for making it this far and we'll let him decide if he even wants to try again next year. As we were getting ready to leave we peaked in on the beginning of round three. The first word they had one of the kids spelling was INGURGITATION. Yup, a word I use every day. Don't you? That's what I thought. It was a fun morning. Maybe we'll do it again next year.
3 comments:
Today's event seems more my style, compared to the snake rodeo of last weekend. Tell Chase great job! Not only can he spell, but he did it in front of an audience. I can't spell so I really admire that quality!
Yahoo Chase! Great Job! I can't spell any of those words so I guess this confirms that I am definately not smarter than a 5th grader!
The spelling bee was a lot more my style than the rattlesnake round-up too! The girl that won also won in 2005 and 2006. Her sister won in 2007. Now Chase is determined to study, study, study and win in 2009. The winning word was flagitation. I don't even know what it means! I was really surprised at how fast it went. My mom said, "They're dropping like flies" because after the first round only 12 out of 26 were left. It was a good experience though. And not as tense as we thought it would be. Chase's teacher came to watch. I thought that was really nice. I hope he wants to do it again next year, but I won't make him if he doesn't. We'll see if he still wants to study, study, study after the excitement wears off in a couple of days.
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