Thanksgiving+food+drives

This year we used the theme "Brother, Can YOu Spare a Dime?" and had stats and photos of the depression years ago compared to today's economic climate. We had contests between and within classes to bring the most canned goods for distribution to needy families within our school district. The winning teacher gets lollipops for her students one day from the library. We got thousands of cans of food this year.



Each year during November we do a food drive for a charity organization like Jackson House, The Mayor's Youth Advisory Board Food Drive, or Mt. Pine Baptist Church Food Pantry. In 2005 we made a turkey head and used hand cutouts from the Ellison cutter in yellow, orange, and red as the feathers. When they brought a can of food for our drive, they signed their name to a hand and helped the naked turkey in the hallway get his feathers. They loved it and it turned out to be a very colorful, full turkey.



In 2006 our theme was "Help us build a wall against hunger." And all the cans that came in were used to build a huge, tall pyramid of canned goods in the library. The mayor came to collect it and for a photo op as we topped off the tall wall of cans before donating them to the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board's Food Drive for Jackson House. This year - 2007-we got a new, large plastic trash can that rolled from the maintainence department and our theme was "Trash Hunger in Garland County." We asked the kids to fill up the trash can with nonperishable items and they did! These were donated to Mt. Pine Baptist Church's Food Pantry.



The food drive for fall 2008 used a yellow utility wagon from Lowe's---which we wanted to fill with food and have a dragon head on the wall with yellow (round) post it notes (representing scales of the dragon) they sign their names to when they bring in a can of food to donate. It is a kit in Upstart Magazine for promoting reading, but we are putting it to different use. We said, "Build our Dragon by filling our Wagon to feed the hungry in Garland County!" We were able to make a long, long dragon in the hallway.