Has anyone ever run a spelling bee?

[Dmmetler]

The local HS one here is run by a religious group that a lot of people in our small HS group won't join, and won't let kids compete in the preliminaries for the regional bee until 6th grade. I'm wondering if it would be at ALL reasonable for our small secular/inclusive group (maybe 50 kids in a reasonable age range for the bee who participate regularly, although we have about 150 member families) to run our own? I'm willing to put in the work-but I admit to wondering just how much work it is!

[LetsDoMath]

I ran our local HS group's spelling bee last year. Okay, so I co-ran it. Really, it wasn't that much work. (It was such a good experience, that we are both running it again this year!) We had to register with Scripps, by paying $$ and giving them an address, send out the practice lists (which we hope to do much earlier this year), find a location, post in our group's forums to recruit kids, find people (not a relative of a participating child) to be the announcer and judges, set up the room, and clean up. You do have a minimum number of kids that need to participate, I think it is 10. Our group had 250 families and we barely made it (yes, that is sad).

 

You can find more information at http://www.spellingbee.com if you haven't already been there. There is even more information, including how to's on running a smooth class and local spelling bee once your group is registered (registration for 2012-13 won't begin until late August). Our HS group had previously registered, so I am not sure if there is any additional work needed to register a new group.

 

Let me know if you have any other questions!

 

 

:auto: (smiley in car for my 3 year old son who is looking over my shoulder)