Elementary students from Montezuma County had to hold their Arbor Day celebration indoors on Thursday, but they kept the focus on the outdoors.

The city of Cortez, which is recognized as a Tree City by the Arbor Day Foundation, recognizes the holiday every year with a monthlong poster and poetry contest for local fourth-graders, followed by a celebration announcing the winners. On Thursday, the winds in Cortez were blowing at more than 30 mph, so Parks and Recreation staff held most of the event inside the Cortez Recreation Center gym. But after the contest winners were announced, some students were able to go outside to get a more hands-on lesson about trees.

The celebration started with ice cream, a short speech from Colorado State Forest Service member Ryan Cox about the history of Arbor Day and a tree trivia quiz for the students. Then Recreation Supervisor Rosa Dimon announced the poster and poetry contest winners, each of whom got to choose between a cash prize and an Osprey Packs backpack

The contest theme this year was “Trees and Me,” so many of the students drew pictures or wrote about individual trees they knew. Grace Myers, who won the poster contest for Lewis-Arriola Elementary School, said she decided to draw the peach tree in her family’s garden.

“Since I like reading, I drew myself reading a book under the tree and the tree giving me shade,” she said.

Fourth-grade classes from Kemper, Lewis-Arriola, Mancos, Manaugh, Mesa and Pleasant View Elementary Schools participated in the event this year, and each school had its own poster winner. But the overall poster winner was Sarah Sparks, of Mancos. The first-place poetry winner, Aysia Mathews, was also from Mancos. She read her poem out loud, ending with the line: “Trees are small, trees are tall, trees are for us all.”

Angelique Alcantar, a Kemper student, won second place in the poetry contest. The other poster winners were Josh Yarbrough of Kemper, Brooke Jabour of Mancos, Adrian Sanchez of Manaugh, Dylan Erickson of Mesa and Tianne Nielson of Pleasant View.

The winning posters and poems will be on display in the Recreation Center throughout the month of May.

After the winners were announced, some students went outdoors to learn about wildfire safety from Smokey Bear and the U.S. Forest Service, while others played “tree jeopardy” with volunteers from the Montezuma School to Farm Project or participated in other hands-on lessons.

At the end of the afternoon, each student went home with a tree of their own to plant.