Jason hadn't put down his video game all day.
He was too busy trying to reach level five of Dragon Lands.
Right now he was battling dragons on the way to Kids Central.
He was about to reach the final battle of level four when . . .
Smack! He walked right into Nina.
"Watch where you're going!" she cried.
"Sorry, Nina. I'm trying to finish—" he began.
"It's time to put the video game away," Miss Shelly reminded Jason.
"For today's activity, you'll need a book.
Grab a dictionary!"
Bobby groaned. "A dictionary? Why?"
Miss Shelly held up a thick piece of paper with her name on it.
"We're making name poem bookmarks."
Jason tucked his game into his backpack.
"What's a name poem?"
"It's a poem that uses the letters in your name," Miss Shelly explained.
"My first name is Marie.
So the first word in my poem will begin with M.
The next line will begin with A.
Every line should describe you."
"Magical," Ethan said.
"What's that, Ethan?" Miss Shelly asked.
"That could be the first word in your poem," he said.
"Because like magic, you make things fun."
"What are the dictionaries for?" asked Nina.
"Dictionaries help when you can't think of a word."
Miss Shelly handed out blank bookmarks.
"Write your name poem on these when you're done.
Then you can use them as bookmarks."
Jason scribbled his name on a piece of paper.
J wasn't the easiest letter to start with.
"Jolly?" he thought.
"Sounds too much like Santa Claus."
Next was A. He sighed.
He was awful at writing poems.
"Awful! 'Awful' begins with A!"
He stared at the S and yawned.
"Sleepy!" he thought.
That was easy.
Then there was O.
Jason opened the dictionary to the first page of Oo.
There were mostly words he didn't know, like "obsolete" and "obscure."
He looked through all the letter O words.
He decided that "odd" was the only O word that might work.
When everyone was finished, Miss Shelly called on Ethan to read his poem.
"Excellent surfer, Totally cool, Helpful, Adventurous, and New," he read.
"Because I'm still new to Sunny Dale."
Jason was next.
"Jumpy, Awful, Sleepy, Odd, Nut," he read.
"Nut?" Izzie asked, confused.
"I saw that 'nut' can mean a strange or silly person," he said.
"Jason, are you sure those words describe you?" Miss Shelly asked.
"They're not bad words, but I could think of nicer words."
"Yeah, like J for 'Jigsaw puzzle wizard!'" Bobby said.
"You're great at puzzles."
"And A for 'awesome,'" Nina said.
"S for 'super,'" Izzie added. "Or 'sweet.'"
"O for the 'only' person who can reach level four in the Dragon Lands video game!" Ethan said.
Jason smiled. "You guys are good at this!"
He began writing his new poem.
"But keep N for 'nut,'" Bobby said, grinning.
"Because you can be pretty strange."
[caption_out@