Spelling Bee - round 3

We're all a jitter over here. The spelling bee is tonight, 6pm. Last evening while the boys were at karate, the girls sat on the couch, cup o' warm cocoa for her, warm tea for me and studied. And studied.... and studied! Nearly 2 hours of drilling words! She did quite excellent. She would get frustrated towards the end, but that was only because I was purposely selecting the hard words from the book of hard words! Then I'd throw in the ones that I knew she'd get.... just to boost the spirits, and to give the noggin a rest!

Interestingly enough, the Spanish words were the toughest, oh, and the Slavic words. The Greek and Latin were hard early on... but she's been over and over the Greek words in school so those are easy now, and the Latin ones she finally got the hang of the 'ious' endings! Oooh, and then she spelled Autobahn incorrectly... aack! But, the other German words she did ok on, like umlaut, and wienerschnitzel! The words they'll be spelling are just incredible for 10-11 year olds! Amazing!

A fun fact we learned last night.... Italian only uses 21 or 22 of the 26 Roman alphabet letters! There is no 'K' and "W", "X", "Y", and I forgot what else... Oh, maybe it was also the "J" they don't use! Came in handy, as one of the words she was spelling she wanted to add the Y to the end... but remembered the rule!

So, 6pm tonight and we go up against all the kids in Region 3. I don't know how many schools that is, but I'm sure it must be more than just the 5 elementary schools in our town. She's worn her lucky clothes today.... and is a bit edgy from nerves. Still I reassure her... She has done so well. So very few kids come this far, so already she has won! I'd have to say she's the best speller in the family!

It's certainly heavy on her mind, as last night as I woke her up to test her blood sugar, she mumbles to me... "did I get it wrong?" ... sigh.....

No matter the outcome, we will make this a great, fun evening for her tonight!