1999: David Beihl of South Carolina became the first homeschooler to win the National Geography Bee at age 13.
2002: 10 year old homeschooler Calvin McCarter from Michigan became the youngest winner of the National Geographic Bee.
2003: 14 year old homeschoolers, James Williams from Vancouver, Washington also won the National Geographic Bee.
2005: The National Geographic Bee champion was homeschooler, Nathan Cornelius of Minnesota.
2007: This year’s winner of the National Geographic Bee is 14-year-old Caitlin Snaring, 14, of Redmond, Washington. She is the second girl to win the contest in its 19-year run. Caitlin is a homeschooled 8th grader.
This list of impressive homeschoolers in not for the purpose of bragging, but instead to give homeschoolers a bit of encouragement. Middle school, the age of the winners of the geography bee, is when a lot of parents return to public schools after throwing their hand in the air and declaring their children are too old, advance, or impossible to teach. Even those who have not given up have had their moments.
There is one thing you may have noticed about these middle school students however. They are highly competitive. While you may have a hard time getting them to do their math work, or to study social studies and science, by simply introducing a competition into the picture, your child may accomplish much more than you even imagined. With the right prompting, they will not only study, but hyper focus on a subject and possibly come home with a national prize.
While I do not know the personal studies of the five National Geography Bee winners listed above, I do live with and homeschool children in this age bracket. I know my daughter did not start practicing piano for an hour and a half a day until the lure of a pageant prize was presented. I know my son likes to have the “highest grades” so to get him to work harder, a part time classroom environment was necessary.
So my message here is this. Find contests and competitions that your homeschooled kids may be interested in, then stand back, and get out of their way.
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*Want to know more about homeschooling? Start with the 2006 homeschool blog in review!
* Have you seen the homeschooling curriculum glossary?