Spelling Bee

Last Thursday, January 12, Sara and Evan were both in a Spelling Bee.  They were sooooo nervous that morning.

Sara is in 4th grade and she was going up against 4th through 8th graders.  She didn't want to be in it.  She was always saying, "I can't do it, Mom.  I'm going against 8th graders."  We kept reminding her that no matter what grade they were in everyone got the same words to study.  She had just as much chance as everyone else and that it didn't matter if she won as long as she tried her best (you know, the normal parent pep talk).  Anyway, she went, participated, and WON!  She did awesome.  There were 24 kids total.  She just went up there and spelled all her words with confidence.  Here's the list of the words she got:

blissful, twinkly, lightning, altogether, animation, hydrogen, pristine, intercept, duress, intrigue, harmonious, syringe, Camelot, thoroughbred, referendum, romaine, panickiness, luxurious, systematic, and her winning word - choreographer.

Way to go Sara!

In between Spelling bees we hung out at home with cousin Logan and watched Tangled.

Evan's was later that afternoon.  This was his very first spelling bee he competed in.  He was up the night before with an upset stomach because he was so nervous.  We gave him the same speeches we gave Sara.  Just do your best and that's all that matters.  It's good to learn how to spell the words.  His was 1st through 3rd grade.  There were a total of 15 students and he got 3rd place!  He, too, just went up and spelled those words with confidence.  He worked really hard to learn the words.  We only studied the first four columns.  He wanted to do more but I didn't think they would get as far as they did so we didn't go farther.  My bad. They did get to the fifth column.  He said to me, "Mom, I told you we should have studied the other column."  He was right but he did so great.  He got every single word we studied right.  I was sooo proud of him.

Here's the list of his words:

drill, blimp, gleeful, shears, title, mumps, helmet, reflect, turkey, compact, blissful, wingspan, shuffle, and his last word he misspelled was mustard (m-u-s-d-a-r-d).

He was disappointed a little bit was he was excited he still got a gift card to Barnes and Noble.  We went that night and let him and Sara find some books to use their gift cards.