School is in, and teacher Hetty King has announced that the provincial spelling bee competition for students is coming up. To pick their school's candidate, she is going to hold a series of practice bees, then a final actual one. The winner will be sent to the provincial bee. To encourage the students to try hard, Hetty also announces that the winner of the school bee will win a new dictionary (ooh!) while any student who does especially bad in the practice bees will be required to wear a dunce cap for the rest of the day. I feel like the negative reinforcement outweighs the positive here.
In a secondary plot, early in the episode Peg had been wandering through the King farmland and accidentally scared the kids, who believe her to be a witch. Janet, indignant that her children were frightened on their own land, had words with Peg and ordered her off the property. So Felix is more than a little unnerved when he wakes up and finds himself in Peg's shack. But the gruff Peg treats him kindly, gives him some soup, and listens to his poured out tale of woe. She tells him that she knows what he needs to be a success at spelling: a magic stone which she just happens to have on one of her shelves. She gives it to Felix, telling him to keep it with him during the bees and he'll be unbeatable. An excited Felix runs home to find his family and neighbours all gathered in despair, having been out all night searching for him in the snow. Though relieved and thankful that he's fine, Janet and Hetty get into it, with Janet accusing Hetty of being to blame for Felix running off and almost freezing to death. Hetty denies being responsible but at school later that day, experiencing twinges of guilt, she tells Felix that he's excused from taking part in the spelling bee. To her surprise, Felix insists on taking part in the bee- which is the actual one this time- and he confidently and unhesitatingly spells down all the other students, winning the bee (and the dictionary) and a trip to the provincials.
Later, Felix and Janet make a trip to Peg's shack. Janet apologises to Peg for her harsh words and tells her that she is always welcome on King land. She also gives Peg some pies that she baked and thanks her for helping Felix. Before they leave, Peg tells Felix that he didn't need the magic rock, just belief in himself.
This is an average first season episode of Road To Avonlea... not great, but with some good moments. The plot is a bit obvious- rewritten Dumbo and the magic feather- and the ending "believe in yourself" message is trite and cliched. But it is a good episode for fleshing out Felix's character. Usually he's portrayed as a mischievous imp, but here we see another side to him: he's insecure and afraid of being laughed at. And of disappointing his parents. Also, we see Felix's frustration and despair at working hard at a subject, actually having a good head knowledge of it, but being unable to display that knowledge in the manner required. You really feel for him in these moments. There's also some good interplay among all the children as they vie to win the spelling bees. To sum up, The Witch of Avonlea is worth watching, but more for character development than plot.