Battle of the Books and Knowledge Bowl

We've had all 3 kids in a few school competitions these last couple weeks that deserve their own posts about.

Battle of the Books

All 3 kids participated in Battle of the Books.  This is where they get a list of 20 books that they can read through out the year.  Then they form groups and in March have a competition of trivia questions about the books.  They need to correctly give the book name and the author's last name.  All 3 kids read all 20 books which makes me so happy.  You only have to read 3 of them to participate but if you read all 20 you get to be an all-star.

Jaron was in a group with 3 other boys including his good friends Aiden and Royce.  Jaron got to be the team captain which means he had to be the one to answer the question after he conferred with his group.  They did a great job and I got to sit in on a couple rounds and help out with the questions.  During one round of the non elimination rounds their group was up against a really good 4th grade team (Ryder Daniels team in our ward) and they lost.  Jaron had a rough time because one question he had to guess on and when he guessed his friends didn't like his guess and weren't super nice about it.  He felt so bad and started crying at the end.  It broke my heart but luckily his friends apologized and knew they hadn't been very nice about it.  Good but hard life lesson.  They won their other 3 rounds.  Unfortunately they lost in the first elimination round.

Siena and Aria were on the same team together with 3 other kids in their class.  Siena was the team captain.  They had a great time and won all 4 of their rounds.  During elimination rounds they kept going and going.  In the semi-finals they went up against Ryder's team (that beat Jaron's team) and they beat them.  I felt bad because Ryder was crushed and so sad about.  So that meant they were in the finals.  The final round is held in front of the entire 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades.  Shane and I got to go and watch.  I was so nervous for them.  But they won!  I was so impressed with how well they did and it was so fun to watch them win.  They were excited and got trophies and a $30 gift card to a book store for it.

After the final battle all the all-stars got to battle the 3rd and 4th grade teachers in a round.  Ryder was the team captain for the 4th grade and Jaron was the team captain for 3rd grade (they were the ones in each grade that finished all 20 books first.)  They ended up tying the teachers and it was such a fun time.

Knowledge Bowl

Siena and Jaron have been participating in Knowledge Bowl this year.  Aria does orchestra so she didn't do Knowledge Bowl this year but wants to next year.  Once a week they've been going to school an hour early and learning about Geography.  I've been so impressed with everything they have learned.  Utah geography, US geography and even some world geography.  They know states/capitols, counties, national monuments, forests, parks, rivers, oceans, etc.  

They had 3 fun competition events where they got to show off their knowledge with buzzer rounds.  The first was an assembly where they got to battle against the 3/4th grade teachers.  They beat the teachers by a lot.

They had a practice competition with 2 other schools.  They had 3 rounds against 3 different teams and they won each of their rounds.  There is a trophy that gets passed around for the winning school and Ridgeline got the trophy.

Then the final competition was the district wide competition.  There were approximately 28 schools that participated.  We had a fun study session the night before with Ryder who was on their team.  The actual competition was a little bit rough and hard.  The other schools were so fast at those buzzers and so we lost 3 of our 4 rounds.  The kids were so disappointed and it was a rough day after studying so hard all year to come out like that.  But we focused on what we've learned and after all the other successes I think they learned some good life lessons.  We can't always win everything but we can have fun and be grateful for the experience.

The whole team celebrated by going to an escape room one night.  Siena and Jaron might think that was the best part of the whole experience, they had so much fun.

They have already said they want to do it again next year.  The topic I think is history next year.

Over all these competitions I am so proud of my kids for participating learning and growing so much.  Also thankful our school has such good support and great programs like these to help kids to keep learning and pushing themselves.