Character Bee

Several weeks ago I discovered that the charter school we partner with was going to host a spelling bee.  I thought it might be something my second grader would be up for.  He's very keen on competition. So I explained what a spelling bee was and he was game.

We received the list of words about a week or two before Christmas.  This gave us about a month to practice these words.  Christmas is a busy time for anyone, but when you homeschool and you live thousands of miles away from grandparents it's a little extra hectic on mom. Which means that mom was depending on my second grader to exercise some independence on practicing spelling bee words.

Ombudsman????? What kind of Children know these types of words?

I reminded him and I did on several occasions attempt to help him memorize these words. I could see he was becoming increasingly disinterested in words and more interested in what Santa brought (who wouldn't Bee? haha).

About a week before the spelling bee I asked him if he was interested at all in being in the spelling bee.  At this point he'd had it (and so had I).  So I told him he didn't have to compete.

Then this morning I woke up....

  I realized that whether or not he knew the words he needed to do it for two reasons.

1. Because he committed
2. Because one thing my son needed to learn was how to lose and be happy for the child that does win.

You see my oldest child like many other children, including myself as a child, has a hard time with others receiving praise when he does not. He takes it as a blow to his self esteem, as he's worth less and the other person as worth more.  And consequently he can not celebrate his peers successes.

So for us this spelling bee will be about doing his best while being happy for others in their successes.  His personal Character Bee.

Meanwhile, we will be cramming for the 2 days that we have left.

Update