Thursday, February 16, 2017

Oregon Battle of the Books

Back in November, Evelyn signed on to be a part of Oregon Battle of the Books, a state reading competition that is held at schools across the state. Students compete in teams and "battle" against other teams on book knowledge. Evelyn was fortunate enough to have been chosen as an alternate last year as a 3rd grader (its mainly for 4th and 5th grade) and battled on a 5th grade team and did very well. Reading definitely is one of my sweet girl's loves so I was happy that she wanted to do OBOB again this year.

Her team consisted of 4 sweet, smart, energetic and silly girls whom I took under me wing to mentor for the big battle, which was TODAY! For the past 3 months or so we have meet weekly or even twice weekly to talk about the books and go over sample questions. The girls also made sure to have fun too, and we did things like make Christmas cookies, took walks around the block and took trips to the park.

During our first meeting we had back in November, I had two things for the girls to decide, the first being their team name. They chose the team name "Huckleberry Rubber Duckies", after Evelyn shared about the rock formation with the same name that she scaled up at Anthony Lakes this past summer. The second thing to decide was how serious they wanted to be. I really felt these girls had the potential to REALLY do well, but I also didn't want to push them if they just wanted to have fun. The girls were ALL IN and were committed to working as hard as they could.

This morning, they all were nervous but excited. I gave them a pep talk and off they went to their first battle.


Matching "Huckleberry Rubberduckie" socks... a little gift to them on battle day. They loved them!

Ready to go!

Cheering section.. kids from their class made them signs for support. 

First battle.. they got off to a bumpy start but once they got into a rhythm they won handedly. 

The girls kept winning battles and eventually made it to the fourth grade final... and they WON!!!! They were so excited and I was so proud of them.... they worked so hard and totally earned that title. Fourth grade champs.. and a chance to battle the 5th grade champs for the title of Fir Grove champs and earn a spot in the regional competition!

The big final battle was at the end of the day. The girls fought hard and did so great.. and lost to the 5th grade boys team by just ONE point! ONE!

Even though they didn't win that last battle, they were so happy and excited that they did so well and that the day was over! :) I have to admit, I was a bit misty eyed as they celebrated... I am so proud of them!
I took the girls to Dairy Queen after school to celebrate a job very well done. 

I will miss working with these girls but know we all will remember our time together. Proud of my Huckleberry Rubberduckies!!