Over the last ten school days, Abbot-Downing School students, staff and families have competed in donating 1,513 snack bars and 128 cereal boxes. At the end of the competition, the fifth grade class came out victorious.
The school on South Street launched “Abbot-Downing Raises the Bar” on Nov. 10 to collect snack bars and compete between grade levels, from kintergarden to fifth grade. Each day, donations were organized and points were assigned to each grade level based on the snack bars collected.
The daily totals were displayed in a bar graph to keep the theme running and lots of mental math was utilized to calculate and plan — as well as sabotage. Boxes of crackers and cereals acted as negative points that students strategically placed in other grades’ donation bins.
The program is run by the Abbot-Downing Home-to-School Liaison, Katelyn Goodington, with support from the Rundlett Care Closet and many middle school volunteers.
“Now is a time when more families are struggling with food insecurity and more families want to help,” Goodington wrote in an email. “Hopefully, this plan is fulfilling for our larger community.”
The donations will go directly toward filling up the weekend wagon for families in our school. The Weekend Food Bag Program is a no-cost confidential support for families where non-perishable groceries are discreetly placed in students’s backpacks on Friday afternoons.