Homeschool World Forum

[SimonaD]

We live in Los Angeles country, and do independent study at Laurel Springs School (www.laurelsprings.com).

My daughters are all fired up about competing in a spelling bee, but I cannot find ANY information on how homeschoolers break into the local bees... actually, I have searched high and low, and cannot even find any information about a local spelling bee here in Los Angeles county.

The Scripps website is not helpful either, offering only the information that the winners come up via their own school's competition.

But we all know for a fact that homeschoolers have been rather successful in past spelling bees.

Does anyone have any idea where I can turn for more information?

(I know our local brick-and-mortar schools do not participate in Scripps, so it's not just a matter of "crashing" a school competition where we live).

Thank you in advance for any suggestions!

[Ramona]

Go to http://www.scripps.com/newspaper/newspapers.html and look at the papers in California. Find the newspaper that is closest to you and contact them. They should be able to tell you what school systems in your area participate. Find out what the paper's guidelines are, and then contact the school system and find out what their guidelines are.

When we lived in Maryland my DH started our own tiny little local homeschoolers' bee that (for National Spelling Bee feeder-bee purposes) "counted" the same as one of the schools feeding into the district bee. We never had more than 4 contestants in our homeschoolers bee, but it was a lot of fun and we got our homeschooled winner into the school district bee each year.

(Since the official bee didn't take very many minutes with only 3 or 4 contestants, we also had a practice bee first, an adult bee for parents who showed up to participate in, and then an all-comers bee that included kids below 4th grade and above 8th. Our homeschool bees were so much fun!)

HTH,
Ramona

[SimonaD]

Thanks Ramona, I will try that route... The website link you have seems to be down, even for the local newspaper I found, weird... www.venturacountystar.com is not coming up either, I'll keep trying!
Best,
Simona