2017's Reading Olympic Champions

Reading Olympics was one of the funnest things I've been able to participate in at the kids' school so far. I was lucky enough to be one of the coaches for Ella's team - The Dewey Decimal Dragons - and to witness these 12 kids work together to learn everything they could about the 40+ books on the book list in the weeks leading up to the competition.

As proud as I was of the whole team, it paled in comparison to my pride and joy and excitement at watching Ella the night of the competition. She was so happy and so confident in her knowledge of the nearly 40 books she read from the list. I watched her enthusiasm as the questions were asked and she realized she had the answer, which happened for nearly every question out of the 60 that their team was asked, as well as the ones they "stole" from the other team. I watched her as team captain for one of the three rounds delegate to other team members to answer the question - even if she had to give them the answer to say out loud. And, I listened as we moved from one round to another to this smart girl of ours as she gave the most detailed, long-winded answers just to make sure she covered every part of the answer she could in order to win the point. (In fact, most of the team gave the same detailed answers so much so that the commentator sometimes had to cut them off to say they got the answer correct and that they could stop answering because time was short.)

At the end of the night, Ella and her team had 78 points - the highest score of the night!!

I loved all of the practices with these great kids leading up to the night of the competition and the competition even more. I can't wait to do Reading Olympics again with Brooklyn in two years.

 The Dewey Decimal Dragons waiting anxiously for the competition to start. They were on fire and ready to roll...

There were three teams of twelve students Reading Olympic teams at Quarry Hill, but the DDD were obviously the best!!...

Every time the commentator would ask the team a question, the kids who'd read the book would shoot their fist into the middle of their circle to indicate they'd read the book. Then those team members had 20 seconds to discuss the answer before announcing it out loud. If they got it wrong, the question would go to the other team to "steal." If they got the answer right, they got the point...

 The champions holding their ribbons, and their proud four coaches...