Reader Photo: Betsy Ross Students Donate Cereal to the CFA

When General Mills announced a bonus Box Tops program to start off 2014, the Betsy Ross School in Mahwah turned this into an opportunity to help local families in need.   

As an active participant in the Box Tops for Education program (BTFE), the elementary school holds monthly collection contests to encourage students to bring in Box Tops, which are redeemed for ten cents each and applied towards academic enrichment programs.  When the Bonus Box Tops program was announced for January – up to 40 bonus Box Tops would be given for the purchase of General Mills cereal – the school saw this as an opportunity to ask families to bring in cereal boxes to donate to the Center for Food Action in Mahwah so other children could also have a healthy breakfast.   

While collecting the cereal boxes, the school staff used the opportunity to teach the students about the nutrition information on the boxes and have some fun creating challenging math problems using the box counts and nutrition information for their Math Monday morning meeting.   

While the program was successful on many levels, collecting 100 boxes of cereal for the local food shelter was a rewarding opportunity for the children to give back to the community.