Chloe has her first-ever spelling bee on Friday. She’s supposed to study the spelling words she’s accumulated in class over the last few months, and we started our preparations this evening. She spelled word after word after word. And in a tribute to the movie “Akeelah and the Bee,” which we watched together a couple of weeks ago, we stuck to the most difficult words from her lists.

But she was more interested in singing the spelling than actually spelling the words correctly. So she spent most of her time misspelling and then respelling. But she had fun, and I did a good job of maintaining a calm demeanor (the spelling coaching does get kind of boring after a few minutes, but I will admit to enjoying that more than some of her arts & crafts projects).

In the meantime, we’re making good progress with Matilda by Roald Dahl. We haven’t laughed out loud as much as we did the first time, but we’re enjoying it a whole lot. The downside is that Matilda’s precocious reading hasn’t really inspired Chloe to read much on her own, but that will come with time. I just know it will.