So, What Happened Was...: S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G B-E-E

BOTH my boys are in the school spelling bee this year. Yay!

(Teachers I work with might want to skip the next paragraph)

This is funny to me because:
a) spelling is not something we practice at home
b) I think spelling homework past 2nd grade or so is a complete waste of time
c) The only reason I make them do spelling homework is because they need to learn to do what the person in authority tells them to do, even if they don't see the point in it.

Now of course my KIDS don't know how I feel about spelling homework. They think they better do it and do it well each and every day. But I'm pretty sure there have been times they turned it in incomplete or misspelled because I didn't bother to do more than glance to see they had attempted it before signing off on it.

Anyway, back to the spelling bee.

Thomas was in it last year too. He got out early on because he was nervous and missed a really easy word. This year he was super worried he would mess up again. So every day we started with "It's just an activity for fun. You won in the classroom spelling bee because you were having fun and wanted to win the game. Don't get nervous, because it doesn't matter if you win the school bee or not. It's all about having fun with it."

Steven's class didn't do a homeroom bee. The teacher just picked her top 2 spellers to enter into the school bee. Steven tried to act like it was no big deal, but I knew he was super scared about getting up in front of those kids and parents he didn't know. So we gave him the whole "It's just a game" speech too. Except that kind of motivation doesn't work well with Steven. So we went into the spelling bee on Wednesday morning holding our breath that the kids wouldn't get embarrassed. Is it wrong to hope someone else's kid is a bad speller and gets out first?!

Thomas wore his "Lucky Spelling Bee Shirt".