Wednesday, February 10, 2010

To Bee or Not to Bee

Caleb is supposed to participate in the Kaufman County Spelling Bee tomorrow afternoon. He's been working hard since October learning to spell a list of 250 words that range from jet, can, and wig to latitudinarian, horripilation, and fluoroscope.

The big question is this: If it snows tonight and tomorrow as forecast, will they reschedule the bee?

In a way, it would be beneficial to have a postponement. Caleb has several words he's been having trouble with, and that would give him a little more time to study them.

On the other hand, he's ready to get this done. He's waffled at times on wanting to drop out of the bee because he's gotten frustrated with missing the harder words. Then he'll be successful at spelling even more difficult words and his feelings toward it will change.

Tired of his fits and complaining about the words being hard, I gave him an ultimatum last week. I told him he needed to decide once and for all if he's going to participate, to think seriously about whether he wanted to do this or not. If he did, we'd continue working on the word list and he wouldn't complain about it. If he didn't, I'd let the bee coordinator know and that would be the end of things - and I wouldn't allow him to participate the following year. Even though he decided to continue on this year, he's not sure if he wants to try next year. I guess that will be determined by how he does in the actual bee, not our practicing for it.

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