Friday was the last day of classes for students at Vogelweid Learning Center at St. Peter Catholic School in Jefferson City.
For Brody Bax, 9, the day ended with a special recognition.
Bax won first place in a state poetry contest sponsored by the Federated Garden Clubs of Missouri, of which the Bittersweet Garden Club in Jefferson City is a member. Bittersweet had three state winners this year and one national award winner. The contestants range in age from kindergarten to freshmen year of high school.
"We do this every year, and we focus on promoting gardening and love of nature amongst children," said Sharon Burnett, who is the club's poetry chairperson. "We also want them to enhance their writing skills and promote future interest in going into writing as a career or as a hobby."
Burnett said they've had several local winners of these contests and she credits teachers like Bax's teacher, Jane Schnieder, whom Burnett said "has done a wonderful job of making it more than just writing a poem, it's a whole learning experience for them."
Schnieder teaches students in the school's special-education program.
"I teach about sentence structure, and we talk about capitalization and punctuation," Schnieder said. "Then I find a project that they can do that they can use what they've learned."
Schnieder said the contest information was dropped off at the school so they did it.
Bax's poem, titled "Chickadee," was an acrostic poem. That's a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name or phrase when read vertically. This was Bax's poem:
Chickadee
Chickadees are songbirds
Homes are in the woods and backyards
I love chickadees.
Chickadees are birds
Katydids are eaten by chickadees
A chickadee got its name by saying,"chick-a-dee-dee-dee."
Do owls eat chickadees?
Easy food for birds in insects and seeds.
Eggs are white with red spots.
"It doesn't have to rhyme, and it's the easiest poem to do," Schnieder said. "I grade them on their sentence structure and what they learned."
Along with his certificate, Bax got a $20 cash prize. When asked what he'd do with the money, he paused and then happily said, "Spend it at McDonald's."
Also recognized on Friday was Laura McCune who is a second-grade home school student in Jefferson City. McCune's poem was titled, "A Bird's Song."
A Bird's Song
When a bird sings,
It's like no other song in the world. Each song is different.
With a big gush of wind it's perfect.
Woosh, tap-atap-tap, squawk, Jay! Jay!
Gush, woosh,
Kip kip, pattap, shapshap, Woosh, taptap.
And that's a bird's song.
"She has always loved writing and has shown a knack for storytelling," said McCune's mom, Michelle. "She won a short story contest when we lived Sunrise Beach last year so this is her second first-place award."
It's contests like this, Michell said, that encourages her daughter and others like her to continue to develop their skills.
"She asked me after she won this award, 'Do you think I could grow up to be a famous poet?' and I told her I thought so," Michelle said. "I think it's wonderful that these kids have the opportunity in this community to be able to do this."
Laura McCune, at left, a second grade home school student in Jefferson City, is given her first place award by Sharon Burnett of the Bittersweet Garden Club which helps local contestants in the statewide poetry contest. (Submitted photo)