Spelling Bees and Balderdash

As you may be aware, our class has a spelling bee every morning of the week, every other week. The children are sometimes in teams, while other weeks each child attempts the words individually. I announce each word; the words are spelled out on the blackboard; and I award points to everyone who spells the word correctly.

Some weeks, the spelling bee has been structured around words that are unfamiliar to the children, but are spelled precisely the way they sound. Other weeks, there have been particular patterns or roots the children have to identify to improve their chances of success in their spelling. Since this is water month, last week's bee was based on the prefixes "hydro-" and "di-" (the better to understand "dihydrogen monoxide"). Here are some of the words that everyone got right last week:

hydrography

hydroelectric

dimorphic

hydrophobic

Pretty impressive!

As this is not a spelling bee week, we used the interval between 8:45 and 9:00 to play a round of Balderdash, which we haven't played for a while. Mike found our word in the dictionary: "sullage." Here are the possible definitions:

—an old type of sewer that made the waste go into rivers and/or lakes, producing unclean water

—the remains of metal after it is scraped up and thrown away

—a silt deposit in water or river or stream

—the kind of sulphur that infiltrates sewage

—a form of sewage that is filled with litter and waste

—to sull someone

—the spoiling or ruination, "sullying," of a reputation