My champion speller
A few weeks ago we rented "Akila and the Bee", a movie about a girl living in the gang invested ghetto town of Crenshaw, who was gifted with a knack for spelling and was able to go all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Ever since then, my daughter Adrianna, the six year old, has not been able to stop spelling.
It took a while to move into larger sounding words, and it took even longer to teach her to bounce back after spelling a word incorrectly. But now she wants to spell everything. She will ask, without regard to time, 'Daddy, give me a word to spell".
So I try my hardest to give her words that will challenge her but still allow her to grow her confidence by getting them correct (or mostly correct). On occasion I will really giver her a doozie, but for the most part, she is up to the task at hand for a six year old.
Seeing my daughter take to spelling like this is an amazing sight to behold. She has such a never ending imagination in all areas of her life. Her brain is alway working. And for a six year old, that is not that uncommon. But when you listen to her come up with new dessert ideas (and actually make them) you begin to realize that her creativity and intelligence are far from common for a kid her age.
I like to think that she inherited this quality from me, but since I am as far from quality as a Ford Pinto, I have to admit that my wife has had a great deal more responsibility handing off the good genes to the children. She teaches them constantly, even when it looks like they are playing or enjoying a movie or reading a book. Our kids have always been advanced, and they show it regularly in the way they learn and recall things that other kids would have swept under their intellectual rugs.
I am proud of my children. And I am proud of my wife for the job she has done in raising them and teaching them. In a word, they are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Amazing.
