GAINFIELD ELEMENTARY CELEBRATES 100 DAYS OF SCHOOL WITH ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE
Schoolchildren Donate 2,400 Food Items to Southbury Food Bank

  To celebrate their first 100 days in school, Gainfield Elementary School collected 2,400 non-perishable food items that they, in turn, donated to the Southbury Food Bank. On Monday, February 11^th, Southbury town employees loaded the boxes of food onto a truck for shipping to the Southbury Food Bank, located at the Southbury Training School.

  “The Gainfield Elementary School Kindergartners have collected food for the Food Bank for nine years and the number of cans and boxes has risen each time,” said Mrs. Marion Bouffard, GES Kindergarten teacher. “This year, however, the participation from students, staff, and teachers has been incredible. Our goal was to collect 2,008 items and this year we gave 2,400 items to the Food Bank. We exceed our goal every single year!”

  Originally designed as a fun way for children to learn to count to one hundred, the Hundred Day Food Drive teaches the entire school how to count into the hundreds and the thousands.

   When the project started in 1999, the challenge to collect one hundred items was first contained to the Kindergarten level. Teachers extended the drive school-wide during its second year. In 2001, the Kindergarten teachers decided to up the stakes and challenge the Gainfield students and staff to collect 2,001 items, in honor of the year, and then increase the goal by one each year.

   The Kindergarten teachers use this food drive not only to help the Southbury Food Bank, but also to teach math and classification skills. For example, the food is organized by letter, as in T for tomato sauce.

   Each week, a Kindergarten student makes a progress announcement on the public address system to the school’s staff, teachers, and students. Representative students from each classroom bring their items to the Kindergarten room each Monday morning where the younger students count and sort the food.

   “Our 100 Day Celebration has blossomed into such a worthwhile project that helps our students understand numbers and classification, while benefiting the Southbury Food Bank,” said Mrs. Bouffard.