Ben, grade one, told us in January that he wanted to enter the spelling bee. Dave and I tried to dissuade him as he is a whole-word reader and, at that point, his vocabulary was quite limited. However, his character shone through, and he insisted that he should be allowed to compete. We relented and he arrived home with a 20 page book filled with words like ache, language and school. "Yikes," I thought, as he opened the book and was unable to identify more than a handful of words. "Opportunity," thought Dave, as he realised that nightly word memorisation would be the key to Ben's progress in reading.
For the next few months Dave and Ben worked out a system of word recognition, memorisation and testing. I did the dishes.
Ben's vocabulary grew exponentially and his reading shot through the roof. Moreover, he showed me an aspect of his character that I truly didn't know existed. He won the primary division which includes grade one through grade three. As my older sister said, "I knew he could do it. He's just a quiet guy who gets the job done." Sort of like his dad.
This was Jacob's third win. He won the senior division, grades 4-6. To his credit, he is a returning champ having won the previous two years' spelling bees. He was especially focused on winning this year's bee as there is an out-of-school competition this year. Also to his credit, he was sick as a dog and only came to school that morning for a few hours in order to attend the bee. He came home immediately afterward to sleep away the afternoon. We take spelling very seriously.
Can you tell that he's sick? He normally doesn't look so cadaverous.
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