All Colorado homeschooled children are invited to join CHEC’s annual spelling bee! Winners are then eligible for the statewide Denver Post Spelling Bee, and qualifiers from that competition will compete in the National Scripps Spelling Bee. (All homeschooled children are invited – not required to be affiliated with CHEC.)
Be creative and have fun with your preparation. Spelling study groups can be formed from your support group, with other families, or within your own family with multiple siblings. Work hard to prepare, then bring the family for competition day: it’s a positive experience for all participants and will help students prepare for the statewide bee.
See more photos from the 2019 Spelling Bee
CHEC Spelling Bee
- WHEN? Saturday, January 18, 2020
- WHO? Any homeschool student in the state of Colorado. The speller must not have passed beyond the 8th grade on or before February 1, 2020. The speller must not have reached his/her 15th birthday on or before August 31, 2019.
- COST? $25 per student.
- REGISTRATION? Registration will open in the fall for the 2020 spelling bee.
- SCHEDULE? The Bee includes the written test, a break, and the oral test. (Exact schedule will be announced later.)
- PLUS! Join the event on Facebook and mark yourself as “Going”!
- CAN I JUST WATCH? Yes! You’re welcome to come and experience the oral competition with your children to support participants and learn if you’d like to participate in the future. Just contact us (events@chec.org) to find out what time the oral competition begins.
Official Rules
The CHEC Spelling Bee is organized under the guidelines of the Denver Post. The age and grade requirements are as follows:
- The speller must not have passed beyond the eighth grade on or before February 1, 2020.
- The speller must not have reached his 15th birthday on or before August 31, 2019.
- The focus of the Bee will be for students in the 4th to 8th grade. However, younger students are welcome to participate.
Preparation Materials
The written portion of the CHEC Spelling Bee is also the qualifying portion for the Colorado Statewide Bee. The vast majority of the words for both the written and oral portions of the CHEC Spelling Bee will be taken from the 2019 Spell It! word list. Find a list of these words on the MySpellIt.com website (they are broken into sub-lists by language of origin).
Access to a PDF version of the Spell It! list can be obtained by signing up for the Word Club on spellingbee.com. (This PDF will also be included in your confirmation email upon registering for the event using the link above.)
The Word Club is an excellent way to practice spelling the words on the Spell It! word list. (Note: Very few words will be taken from the Classroom and School lists on the SpellingBee.com website for the CHEC Spelling Bee. However, the Word Club Spelling Quizzes will require spelling these lists with 80%+ accuracy before “unlocking” access to the Spell It! word quizzes.)
You can also find study helps and other tools and resources on the Spelling Bee website under the “Parents and Students” tab.
For those interested in also studying for the State and National Spelling Bees, we recommend checking out this website for tips.
