Tranquility7 Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Do you ever enter your DC in academic competitions like spelling bees, geography bees. science olympiad, etc.? What do you enter? Why do you enter? (or why not, if you don't) How have the experiences been? Do you generally enter the same competitions every year, or do you just do it once? Do you have to do special things to prepare, or does your regular teaching and reviewing prepare DC for the competition? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 We did a just for fun spelling bee this year and it was overall a good experience. We didn't prepare other than to discuss the format, having a good attitude, etc. we will do it again and will probably do the actual qualifying bee when she's old enough. I decided to enter her because I like the idea down the road of her having a goal to work hard to achieve. Schoolwork so far comes very easy to her and I thought the spelling bee would be a fun challenge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommy22alyns Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I haven't up until now, but the girls' co-op is doing a spelling bee for a fundraiser and we're going for it. Rebecca has a win in her sights! I'd been wanting to do a spelling bee, but was unsure of how to enter a homeschooled student. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucy the Valiant Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I think my 3rd graders would enjoy it, but I don't know of any around us that are open to home schoolers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I haven't up until now, but the girls' co-op is doing a spelling bee for a fundraiser and we're going for it. Rebecca has a win in her sights! I'd been wanting to do a spelling bee, but was unsure of how to enter a homeschooled student. Does your city or state have a homeschool organization? We're in Texas and the Southeast Texas Homeschool organization has a qualifying bee. The winners get go to the regional bee which is a qualifier for state/nationals, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annie G Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 We did spelling bees when our youngest daughter was in grades 6-8. She loves words and it was a fun way to set a goal and work hard. Her goal was to make it to the national bee, which she finally did in 8th grade. We enjoyed the experience so much that we helped two of her friends go to nationals. Between the three kids, they have been five times. Yes, it was additional work, but they enjoyed it. All three kids wish we could have also done the geography bee but we were never able to get that organized. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom0012 Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 We've done the local spelling bee a couple of times. We were given word lists, so I just input them into Spelling City for my daughter and she was good to go. For my son, who has more difficulty spelling, I used the SWR dictation method to go over the word lists with him and prepare. I have had them do it just for the practice of getting up in front of others and also for the confidence boost. It's a fairly small bee and we prepare enough that both kids have always done well. The winners get their name in the local paper and feel like superheroes. We didn't get to do it this year because our schedule is so crazy. At this point, I probably would have only had my daughter participate because my son is in the age range where he would go on to the next level (which is a huge step up) if he won the bee. I don't want to spend the amount of time it would require for him to be successful at something like that. I have thought about having them enter a science fair in the hopes of sparking more interest in that area. This year, I think we'll try to just attend and maybe next year they can compete. Lisa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommy22alyns Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Does your city or state have a homeschool organization? We're in Texas and the Southeast Texas Homeschool organization has a qualifying bee. The winners get go to the regional bee which is a qualifier for state/nationals, etc. Yes, there is a homeschool organization, but I don't think they do any bees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splinter Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 We haven't done any yet, but I think Ds will do the spelling bee next year. He's only 9, so I thought he was a bit young this year. I don't think we have any others around here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassoonaroo Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 For about three years we did the Geography Bee. My dd did well but didn't prep hard for it. If she had prepped I think she could've gone somewhere. This was through the state homeschool assn. and it was an individual thing. It was a positive experience and we learned a lot. I can see how kids could spend hours getting ready for the bee. We entered Geo Bee because my daughter was interested in it, but she decided after a few years she wasn't THAT interested in it. Plus I think it goes through eighth grade, so some kids age out of it. Now, they are into Science Olympiad and that is a team thing and you can't do it alone (however you could have a small team... -- each team has to pay a $100 - $200 fee to register for the year and it varies by state). I'd love to see more homeschoolers doing that. We do it because it's fun and the other people in the club are our friends. And, for the high schoolers especially, it looks good on a homeschooler's transcripts to say you've earned these medals. It's nationally recognized (as is Geo Bee) and when a college reads about those accomplishments they know that it's something "real." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angela in ohio Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 (edited) Sitting at a FIRST robotics competition right this minute, not that that is an individual competition. :D Next weekend is State MathCounts. The NLE (National Latin Exam) has to be worked in there somewhere, too. Middle dd did the AMC-8. We skip the spelling bee because our local homeschool bee is very poorly run. One year, the woman asked to pronounce had a strong accent and pronounced half the words incorrectly, the next year everyone was given access to the list of school competition words prior to the bee and then that list was used for the qualifying bee. Duh. :glare: I thought of putting my dd directly in the regional, but it costs a bit and she's not a big spelling buff. We also do the NACLO (Computational Linguistics Olympiad.) We just found out neither dd progressed to the next level. :sad: They just enjoy taking the test, and it gets them onto the college campus interacting with students. We planned to do the Science Fair, but it ended up being a robotics weekend (maybe it's this weekend? I can't remember,) so that was out. Hopefully next year... Dd wants me to look into the Chemistry Olympiad for next year. We compete because dc enjoy it. They like the peers they meet with similar interests (not something we find in the homeschool community.) I do little to prepare them, other than providing the background academics. They usually study on their own, locate resources, etc., but they don't do much. We do the same competitions each year, but we tend to add a few each year. So we started just doing NACLO and MathCounts, then once I had figured those out, we added the NLE and AMC, and so on. Our experiences have been great. They don't win or place all the time, because we don't prep a lot specifically for the individual competition. They just do their usual academics and then see how it goes. Edited March 9, 2012 by angela in ohio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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