How Melur Got Her Email Account

Kingston's annual spelling bee contestants - junior level - Melur on the far  left

Melur had been asking for an email account. She said she's the only one in her class who doesn't have one. Roy and I were not sure about this. We were worried about spam - among other things.

Anyway, in the end I made a deal with Melur. She'll get her email account if she enters the Kingston's annual spelling bee and gets through to the tie breaker round. To get through to the tie breaker round, she needs to be able to spell all the words listed in the guidebook - about 300 words or so. She was happy to accept this challenge. We worked hard for about 3 weeks before the spelling bee. Here's how we went about it:

1. Melur went through the words for 1-2 alphabets every day. She'll write each word on a flash card.

2. I'll quiz Melur every night on the words from the flash cards. Roy and Arman also did this; basically whoever is free for that night helped. But whenever Arman did the quizzing, it usually ended up with the two of them screaming at each other **sigh** Melur would scream that Arman is pronouncing the words wrong and Arman would scream Melur's just making excuses for not getting the spelling right.

3. We went to the spelling bee practice. They had this about 4-6 times before the actual spelling bee. We attended the practice twice. The first time is just to see how it is, and Melur joined in the second time.

4. We also had a family spelling bee on the weekend. We did this once. Melur and I went one on one, and I think we drew. What can I say... the words are not easy ones.

Melur was a bit scared in the beginning, she became more confident  after the first preliminary round.

On the day of the spelling bee, Melur was a bit scared at first. But, she went through 5 preliminary rounds and spelled the following words correctly: tacit, uxorious, lithosphere, rectitude, and reconstructed. For the tie breaker round, she misspelled "reassurance" and that was that.

You can watch the YouTube video here.

We had a good laugh about this - they misspelled Melur's name - with double Ls

Roy and I are proud that she made it through to the tie breaker round. I asked Melur if she wants to do this again next year, and she said YES! Melur's goal next year is to win a trophy - so at least third place. She has to be a "big reader" for this. We'll definitely come back again next year for the spelling bee. Wish us luck!

PS - That night Melur got her own gmail account.

- Posted by ehaz