When and where will this year's homeschool spelling bee take place?

UPDATE for 2012-2013 year:

This year's Homeschool Spelling Bee open to all homeschooled students living in the Times Union newspaper circulation area will take place on Saturday December 1, 2012.    

The homeschool bee will take place  at Calvary Church 1230 Rugby Road in Schenectady at 10 a.m. Spellers should arrive by 9:45 to register and get preliminary instructions.

Spellers do NOT need to register in advance. We ask that parents of spellers contribute $2 per speller (maximum of $5 per family) to contribute towards the cost of heating the building for the bee and to provide a small prize for our winner and runner-up.

Excellent free study materials from the Scripps Spelling Bee are available here.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about our homeschool spelling bee are available here. 

The FAQ will answer many of your questions about your students' eligibility to participate, how to prepare, and what happens next for the winner of our homeschool bee.

If you have additional questions after reading our FAQ, please feel free to contact me.

Mary O'Keeffe
mathcircle@gmail.com
Home School Bee Organizer

Frequently Asked Questions about the homeschool bee

We generally hold a spelling bee for homeschoolers on a Saturday in early December or January each year.  The exact date, time, location, and directions will be posted on this site in mid-fall.

Here are some frequently asked questions.

Click on each question to go to the answer.

Suppose I win the homeschool bee? What happens next?

Who is eligible to spell in the bee?

What kind of weird words will I have to spell at the bee?

How do I prepare for the bee?

What are the rules for the bee?

What's the history of the local homeschool bee? How long has it been going?

Congratulations and Good Luck to Paul and Zarin!

We will have two homeschool spellers representing us in this year's Capital District Regional Spelling on February 7. The winner of our 2010-2011 homeschool bee, Paul Capuano, placed among the top five contestants at last year's Capital District bee, so he automatically returns to the Capital District bee without needing to participate in our homeschool preliminary bee this year. The winner of our 2011-2012 homeschool bee, Zarin Tuten, will join Paul onstage at Proctors Theater, along with about 100 other students from public and private schools in the greater Capital District. The February 7 bee at Proctor's Theater is free and open to the public, with free parking available in the Proctor's parking lots. The bee begins at 5 p.m. and can easily run until 9 p.m. It will also be televised on local cable.