Yesterday was the school-wide geography bee. Usually I would not have known of such school happenings, but I had this one marked on my calendar for a long time. My sweet little 4th grader was her class champion and moved onto the school-wide bee to challenge the other class champions. The competition is exclusively for the 4th and 5th grade classes with a total of 10 participants.
Sadie was so nervous, and she was relieved that she didn't have to go first. She hadn't been at school for the past three days, nor had she slept either - not because of nerves, but because she had pneumonia as was on the tail end of healing and received special clearance from the doctor to go to school just for the competition. We were nervous for her, but were hoping that she would feel a boost in her self esteem by possibly making it to the top 6 or 7.
Round after round passed and our little Sadie stayed on the stage, nailing questions that neither I nor Alan knew the answer to. Humbling to say that our 9 year old knows more than me!
One by one the chairs emptied until there was just Sadie and a single 5th grader left as the finalists. It came down to the final challenge round of 3 questions. They each got the first question right, the second one wrong and the final question Sadie answered incorrectly and the other participant won. We were so proud of the winner too - she is my friend's daughter and a fellow teammate on Sadie's field hockey team!
Top two! I was so excited for her to be excited for herself! That middle child position is serving her well. While I have worried that she is being neglected and overlooked as the 3rd of 5 children, she, instead, has become a human sponge and absorbed, learned, studied, read and analyzed anything and everything that she can get her hands on.
Her teacher was so proud that she had reached the top two and Sadie came home beaming from school today because of the praise offered her by her sweet classmates.
So proud of my geography bee finalist -- she is just Bee-autiful in every way possible!
