Spelling Bee!

I would like to preface this by saying that at Sophia's 1st Grade conference in October, her teacher reported that Sophia had received low scores in spelling.  In light of how high her reading skills were, this surprised her.....but it wasn't really a surprise to me  - she constantly asked for spelling help at home.  It was at that point that the class started focusing more on spelling in school.  They learned many of the ridiculous spelling rules of the English language, and started taking spelling tests at school, where they were asked the word and the corresponding rule (it turns out there are a lot of rules!).  From my perspective, this was very helpful, and I noticed her spelling improve within a few months.  

In December, she brought home an announcement saying that there would be a school wide Spelling Bee in January and that she brought home the official Kindle Spelling List.  The list was enormous.  It included words like "manicure" and "agog".  But I practiced some with her, and she brought it to Portland for Christmas where Nonna helped her with spelling at night, instead of reading her books.  They also studied together during the day.

The first round started after school resumed in January, where the students competed against their class.  I was genuinely surprised to learn that Sophia won her class-wide spelling bee!!!

Sophia's first phone call was to Nonna (her idea) to thank Nonna for the time she spent working on spelling with her.  And of course we had to celebrate all of Sophia's hard work with a pizza dinner at a new restaurant in town that we genuinely enjoy!  

This meant Sophia went to the Spelling Bee finals and competed against the winners of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade classes.  She was incredibly nervous, as she was on stage in front of her entire school.  And she did well!  She was given "big", and "west", but spelled "oval" incorrectly.  Unfortunately, it was not a word she studied.  She was devastated.  But she will probably never forget how to spell oval ever again!

We love you and are so proud of you, Sophia!