TC Cherry Elementary hosts annual cereal drive with unique celebration

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – At TC Cherry Elementary School, an annual tradition is back as kids are looking to help the community this holiday season.

“We host a cereal drive every year here at TC Cherry. We get to stack them all up like dominoes, and we get to knock them down all throughout the hallways… and it really has a great domino effect on our community as well, because we are donating them to local food banks and other family resource centers throughout Bowling Green and Warren County,” 4th grade teacher Tyler Beyke says.

The halls were filled to the brim with cereal boxes as part of the drive the kids do in partnership with Guarantee Pest Control, and they decided they wanted to have a little fun with them, knocking them down all throughout the school.

“Some teachers say if you can just bring in one box and some teachers say, ‘Hey, if everybody brings in five boxes, we’ll do a pizza party.’ Some sort of positive initiative. But the real goal is to teach the children to be helping other people,” special education teacher Ann Bolin says.

In total, the kids brought over 3,400 boxes, and even the teachers decided to get in on the fun.

“My classroom brought in multiple different boxes. It was super fun to collect the boxes and really watch our total grow as we collected more and more boxes. I shop the sales so we could really collect the most boxes with the amount of money that we had donated,” Beyke says.

One fifth grader brought in 398 boxes, giving her the grand prize of $100.

“I feel excited because I’m helping people in need. Some people don’t have cereal and stuff like that. I think it’s really important because I’m helping other people,” Jaedyn Strickland says.

But above all, the kids are learning how to give back to those in need this holiday season.

“If you go around the school and talk to especially the intermediate students, they really understand the idea of giving back. The little ones are sort of still learning to give back, but the older children actually inside of their classrooms, they’re sort of doing that in our small scale. This is just a bigger scale of that… and beyond our walls, we talk about that at school. Let’s go beyond our walls and let’s help Bowling Green in general,” Bolin says.

“I feel like I am not only here to be their reading teacher, but I’m also here to show them the importance of giving back and philanthropy. So just setting that example for them is really rewarding,” Beyke adds.