Overachieving

After Ben got back to school after winter break his teacher gave a spelling assessment, designed to re-evaluate the spelling lists for the class (not all the kids get the same spelling list, depending on skill level). For the first half of the year Ben's spelling words had been not-so-challenging. In fact he almost always got 100s on all his spelling tests and never had to practice the spelling of the words. The words were usually like, I don't know, "Stitch", words that are vaguely tricky but let's face it, not really.

He came home after the spelling assessment excited to tell me about how well he had done on it, but his enthusiasm has dampened by now because his first new spelling list (test tomorrow) now consists of words like "monologue" and "monotonous"  and "unilateral" and he is expected to know the definitions now as well as the spellings.

That's what you get for over-achieving, I told him ;)