Lakefield District Public School (LDPS) recently challenged their students in a way that both educated the kids and enhanced the community.
The Great Cereal Box Challenge was started last month with the goal of collecting 1000 boxes of cereal to donate to the Lakefield Food Bank. The challenge was led by Amanda Vallillie, a kindergarten teaching and Jocelyne Laperle, a Grade 6 and 7 teacher.
“There has been lots of great math, teamwork, communication, and planning in this challenge,” Vallillie said. “Students have been estimating, sorting, counting, and planning how to best set up the domino run. We are so proud of our students, staff, and school community!” The two teachers said that they had seen the initiative done at other schools and wanted to join in, stating that the holiday season always puts a high demand on the local food bank. They felt this was a great way to educate the students at LDPS through math while highlighting food insecurity within the local community and helping to give back to those in need.
“We hope this can be a reminder that many small acts can result in a big and impactful outcome! Also, we hope people will continue to donate and support our local food bank during the holiday season and beyond.”
Collection started on Monday Nov. 15 and on Friday Nov. 26 with students, teachers, staff, families, and local businesses have generously donated over 860 boxes of cereal for this challenge.
The boxes were then set up in the school gymnasium for a domino run before being donated!
Students were grouped up and able to head to the gym to see the grand culmination of their hard work.
The students were then able to set up the cereal boxes themselves, using math skills, into a fun pattern to see how they fell.
“They’ve been practicing for about nine days and different ways of setting them up to have the best angles and success and they built in little safeties. So that if one goes down, they don’t all go down. There’s been, amazing planning and teamwork.”
Vallillie said that they had families donate over 20 boxes and even local businesses such as Giant Tiger, Logan Tree Experts, and Foodland donated to the challenge.
