verbatim: J-U-L-I-E

March 09, 2010

J-U-L-I-E

Every morning on the way to school, Julie asks me to quiz her on spelling words. "Chance," I say. "C-H-A-N-C-E," Julie says. "Happiness," I say. "H-A-P-P-I-N-E-S-S," Julie says. And so on, all the way to school. And again on the way home. "Jungle," I say. "J-U-N-G-L-E," Julie says. All of this practice was leading up to last night's all-city spelling bee.

Guess who was the winner of the grade 2 competition?

She started off easy, with "pound," and moved on to harder words like "might" and "quilt." She won on the word "basketball," but as far as I was concerned, she had already won it earlier in the round on "science." That's hard!

In the photo above, she's holding her certificate of merit and her goodie bag (pencil, lollipop, etc.), both of which everyone in the bee got, plus the grand prize: a gift certificate to Learning Express, our favorite toy store!

On the way out, an older woman stopped us to congratulate Julie. She said, "I had her pegged as the winner right from the start." We asked why, and she said, "I taught for 45 years, and I could just tell immediately that she had it." She sure did! I can't describe how proud I was last night. She was really nervous, but she got up there and nailed it. Maybe I've got a budding copyeditor in my midst!

09:01 PM | Permalink

Comments

Bravo! What an accomplishment -- no small feat in a city as big and, well, accomplished as Newton. I wonder if it helped Julie's nerves and confidence to have seen her big sister "get up there and nail it" for her own big day (Bat Mitzvah) so recently. But this one is all Julie's! Wonderful. (And Bravo to Julie's training partner -- on the win, and, belatedly on your blog-iversary!)

Posted by: Sandy | March 09, 2010 at 09:48 PM