Saturday, November 1, 2008

And the Winner is......(drum roll please)..JULIANNA BOZONE!!!


I am one proud mama-Julianna just placed 1st in the Regional Spelling Bee at West Palm. Doyle and I were a little dramatic when they announced her name. Let me explain. Our school participates in 2 different Spelling Bees. The first one of the year is organized by FACCS (Florida Association Christian College and Schools). We had a spell-off in each classroom from grades 1-8 to choose the top 3 spellers to go to Regional Competition in West Palm where they compete with about 5 other schools. The top 4 winners go to State Competition in Orlando.

We did not push her to do this since she has so many other things she is involved in: homework, projects, practicing 2 instruments daily, sewing, and band. We told her that if she wanted to go over the lists, bring them to us and we would give her the words. By the way, each grade has 600 words on the list plus they could be given a word up to 2 grades above them, meaning there are 1,800 words to study.

When they get to 6th grade level, the words are pretty hard. We went through some of them, but did not spell each word. She looked over them and we went with that.
On the way to the bee, we were trying to calm her down. We told her that if she got out on the first word, it still had been a learning process and we were proud of her. We stressed that a proper attitude, winning or losing, was extremely important.

Before the bee began, Julianna and Doyle were walking past the table on which the ribbons lay. Doyle jokingly said to Julianna while pointing to a blue ribbon, "Look, this ribbon has your name on it!"

When they had eliminated all but 4 people, I saw that look come into her eyes. At this point, I am glad that my blood pressure was not being monitored. Anyway, she came in first place and there couldn't have been 2 prouder parents. Julianna went around for the rest of the day on a cloud. Hobe Sound Christian Academy was well represented. There were some other winners from our school and I know some of you will hear about that through their blogs. It is off to Orlando in 2 weeks--so here we go!!

5 comments:

Patty said...

Congratulations! Great job Julianna. We are proud of you.

kayla said...

Go Julianna! You make HSCA look good.
Were you out celebrating last night? You had a whole herd knocking at your door.

Kelly S said...

Way to go Julianna! What an accomplishment! We are soooo pround of you!

Esther Hilling said...

From Melanie:

Good job Julianna! You're great at spelling. I can't wait to see you at Christmas.

Mary Ellen said...

Congratulatons Julianna!!

Other than Spencer and Miranda I didn't hear who else won a ribbon, do you know the other winners?

When you get a chance can you please email me the link to the spelling words for State? I have no idea where to find them.

Thanks so much!