Fremont STARS students' design gets picked for Daffodil Festival stamp
By Anessa Myers
Published in News on March 29, 2009 2:00 AM
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News-Argus/ANESSA MYERS
Fremont STARS Elementary School first-graders won the stamp cancellation contest.
The children at Fremont STARS Elementary School sat in the auditorium in suspense Friday afternoon.
They were all waiting to hear the Fremont Post Office Postmaster, Myra Lynn, announce which class had won the stamp cancellation contest.
Each class submitted a design for the stamp cancellation that would only be used Saturday during the Fremont Daffodil Festival.
"It's a nice thing for these kids to be able to say, 'My class did that,'" School Principal Sheila Wolfe said.
All of the classes were recognized at the assembly and asked to stand before the announcement was made.
You could see the anticipation on all of their faces -- except for first-grader Joshua Wright who helped to draw an airplane on the stamp cancellation.
He knew all along which class would win.
"I knew that we were going to win. We drew the neatest things," he said.
The class's design was one showing springtime, and included birds, butterflies, a rainbow, a tree, an airplane, the sun, rain drops and, of course, daffodils.
So when Ms. Lynn announced the first-grade students as the winners of the contest, Wright wasn't surprised, he said.
But many of his classmates were.
Like Abbigail Shackle-ford, who said she helped to draw an apple tree on the stamp cancellation.
Kimberly Hooks said it only took her class one day to draw up the design.
"We did a very good job," she said. "We worked hard on it. I think Miss (Kathy) Davis (the first-grade teacher) is proud of us."
Ms. Davis said she was "very" proud of them, and said they all worked well together to decide on one design.
Other first-grade students said they were "happy," "glad" and "grateful" that their class design was chosen as the winner, and all of them thought that it was "nice," "great" or "cool."
This is the fourth year that the school has worked with the post office to design a stamp cancellation to be used the day of the annual Daffodil Festival.
Thirteen stamp cancellations were submitted, and the three judges -- one from the U.S. Postal Service and two local community members -- chose first, second and third place winners.
The school's second grade class won third place and the exceptional children self-contained class won second place.