Each year the first grade has a big spelling bee. The first round is in each of the 10 first grade classes and the winner and runner up gets a ticket to the big dance which takes place in the school multi-purpose room in front of the entire first grade and all the interested parents!
Every single word they memorized during the year in their wordly wise program was an eligible word, so we did some serious studying. During breakfast I would quiz her, during the drive to gymnastics mommy would quiz her, I even found her asleep one night with her list in her hand...she really prepared well.
Around 11AM last Monday we got an e-mail communication from her teacher that she had WON the class spelling bee and was going to be participating in the first grade spelling bee championship later that week! We were so excited for Ellie. That night we went out and celebrated by taking her to the special treat location of her choice - she went with Dairy Queen :)
Then last week the big championship event came and Ellie's cheering squad (Dad, Mom, Ava, Branson, Lynn, and Katie) hustled over to the school and grabbed seats in the audience. You were not allowed to cheer out loud but you could throw down some serious spirit fingers...which we did!
I think we were a lot more nervous than Ellie was. She was very composed and did a fantastic job doing one of the top two scariest things in the world - public spelling - only trumped by public math!! She made it into the final group of 4 students after the kids made it through every single word they had covered during the year. At that point they pulled out a surprise and began throwing words at them that weren't on their lists - then things got dicey....but Ellie still spelled the words correctly. Finally she was stumped by the word "especially" and heard the words "I am sorry, that is incorrect" for the first time in 2 weeks :( But then the other three kids also got it wrong so she was called back up! Then something unfortunate happened - she did not quite hear the word correctly and spelled "sparkly" when the word she was given was "sparkled" and she was then out of the competition. She had made it into the final three of the ENTIRE FIRST GRADE!!!! Am I a proud Daddy - you bet!!
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Great job Ellie!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Ellie! You worked so hard learning all those words. I was very impressed with your spelling ability and very proud of you. What a great accomplishment!
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