The alternate pronounciation for "Spaghetti" should be..

"Psghetti".... i'm just saying. The child who got this word in the spelling bee did not ask for alternate pronounciation. Had I been asked I would have been very tempted to give that reply. As it was the child did spell out on that word and that would have made me feel bad so I guess I'm glad that I didn't do that.

I have to say that I really enjoyed my role in the bee. I was very nervous going into it. Now that I've done it once, I'm excited about the prospect of doing it again!

At this bee, the Lancaster County Homeschool bee they ran a junior and senior contest. The Scripps folks (sponsors of the National Bee) will accept any student who qualifies at their regional bee. The regional bee in this case however only accepts 6th - 8th graders. Nonetheless, we had a junior bee to give the 4th-6th graders a chance to experience the bee. My nieces Kimberly and Elizabeth (Bippy) were in the junior bee this year. Neither of them won the bee but both performed admirably.

Spelling is not easy. I remember struggling with it myself in second grade. My teacher, Ms. Forest sent words home for me to practice and Dad tried to help me. Dad told me that if I could spell as well as I swam (I was a bit of  fish when it came to the water) I would be perfect. He exaggerated of course but you get the idea. The kids today had to spell on command, in their mind's eye in front of a room full of family, friends and strangers. How intimidiating! Even an 'easy' word could trip someone up. Bippy I know was dissapointed that she missed  her word (pleasant) but knew many of the ones that followed. I believe she made it to round five however and I hope she is proud of herself. Spelling under those conditions isn't easy.

Even when the word is right there in front of you it's difficult. One of my roles was to spell the word  correctly when a child missed. When someone missed the word 'constitution' my eye skipped and I added an extra "I". I also slipped up on reading the sentence for one of the words. The word was "jalapeno" and the sentence had the word 'habanero' in it. I had to take a second to get that word out. And the sentence for polypeptide had the word polypeptide in it twice! And while I'm telling tales on myself I also started to read the wrong sentence for a word one time. All in all though I managed to get through it and I don't believe my missteps hurt the kids in any way.

I was amazed at how well these children did with these words. Although I was familiar with all of the words I don't know that I was at their ages and even on a good day i'm sure I've misspelled some of them from time to time. I'm very glad I was not a judge. It had to be hard to ring the bell on students who missed. They worked and tried so hard!

I really enjoyed this experience and look forward to doing it again! Here are some pictures from today.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=263167&id=730610938&l=6ac13c868a

If you'd like to learn more about the Scripps National Spelling Bee I recommend "Verbomania" written by Amelia Gormley. It recounts her experience in the 2009 Bee. In this book you will find a wonderful recap of the 2009 National Bee (and the regional bee she won to be eligible). Amy captures the mood of the competition and the emotions of the children very well. You'll feel like you were actually there!