The “Let It Bees” (L to R: Jill Talarico, Mary Flamer and Sherry Baker).
The Free Library of New Hope & Solebury will be hosting a “Community Spelling Bee” this fall, and it’s already generating quite the buzz.
The spelling bee is designed as a team competition for adults, and will be held at the New Hope-Solebury High School Auditorium on Thursday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m.
“This is a brand new event that we hope brings the community together for fun competition while supporting our local library,” organizers said.
Teams are encouraged to register now for the bee, which is sponsored by Always Advancing and Penn Community Bank. Each team is comprised of three contestants who work together to spell a given word. Teams write the word on a whiteboard, and hold it up for the judges to see—no one spells alone! And each team gets a “free-bee” for staying in the competition, according to the library.
The event also features a bake sale and raffle drawing. Tickets are $10 for adults, and $5 for students, and go on sale in September. Read more about the Community Spelling Bee online.
Now celebrating its 100th anniversary, the Free Library of New Hope & Solebury earned “Gold Star” status in the Pennsylvania Library Association’s “PA Forward” initiative this year.
I am certainly looking forward to an exciting night of competition. For your information, for at least the last several years, the New Hope Soplebury School District has not participated in the Scripts National Spelling Bee, which has been around since 1925 and growing stronger each year with more and more contestants. I brought this to the attention of the administration several times who just gave me lip service rather than action. What a shame! The opportunity for all students up until the age of 14 through the 8th grade to learn about the origin of words- their country of origin, how they are spelled, pronounced, used in a sentence. Of course since this is knowledge not necessary to do well in state tests and teachers are under plenty of stress to have their kids do well, time has to be spent elsewhere. For example, Would you believe that in grades 3-5 there are 360 math lessons a year! two each day. I wonder how many formal spelling lessons these kids have.