Congratulations to all 19 homeschoolers who took on the challenges of spelling in today's 13th annual homeschool spelling bee, demonstrating bravery, poise, and grace.
There were many challenging words in today's bee. Just a sampling of some of the words includes: liverwurst, aristocracy, mantilla, geranium, pumpernickel, sayonara, harpsichord, eureka, caribou, cryptic, simile, filibuster, incognito, enchilada, and thesaurus.
Our spelling bee first place winner was Mandy Kettell and our second place winner was Jien Ogawa. Mandy and Jien are also among the eight students who will represent homeschoolers on the heegMATHCOUNTS team at the MathCounts competition in two weeks.
Mandy and Jien's friendly camaraderie and mutual support during the high-pressure final rounds of the bee was delightful to observe. Many members of the audience told me afterwards how impressed they were with them, and with all our spellers today.
As a group, the entire collection of spellers provided excellent competition and demonstrated an impressive familiarity with the remarkable idiosyncrasies of the English language. The experience of having competed with such a talented group of spellers will be helpful to Mandy as she represents homeschoolers at the next level of the competition.
Mandy will now spell in the Times Union newspaper bee to be held at Proctor's Theater in Schenectady on Monday March 10 at 5 p.m. in Schenectady. The Proctor's bee on March 10 is free and open to the public, so we encourage all homeschool families to come and cheer for Mandy. (It's also fun and educational for audience members, including the adults(!), to try to spell the words with a pencil and pad in their seats.)
The winner of the Proctor's bee will win an all-expenses paid trip to represent the Capital District at the Scripps National Bee in Washington DC in late May, as well as a number of other prizes.
