SILO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The students in the Gifted and Talented class at Silo Elementary School, under the guidance of instructors June Caruthers and Debbie Oller, created a birthday cake for George Washington, who would have turned 277 years old on Feb. 22.

The cake was submitted to the George Washington’s Birthday Celebration Contest in the third through fifth grades category and placed among the top three in its category.

The class, which studied the life and leadership lessons of George Washington at the beginning of the year, decorated the cake with cherries, symbolic of Washington’s honesty and with red, white and blue decorations, both the school’s colors and colors of the American flag.

Judges selected the top three cakes from each category based on three digital pictures of each cake. The selected cakes will be taken to the Oklahoma History Center Thursday and displayed during the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens and the Fairfax Network’s Distance Learning taping of a Nation to Nation broadcast on Friday. Judges will announce one cake as the overall winner for each category Friday, and the classes that win will receive a George Washington Birthday Party Celebration in their classroom, with a visit from Martha Washington on either Feb. 23 or 25.

Caruthers, who spent a week last summer at the George Washington Teachers’ Institute learning about the first U.S. president, said she has made a conscientious effort to participate in every event that has come along this year that would get the kids involved in learning about Washington.

Last year, Silo Senior Tyler Slawson entered and placed in a George Washington essay contest, in which he was able to travel to Washington, D.C., and interact with national public figures.