Baby Food Drive and a Visit from Ben Franklin

Baby Food Drive: Containers of pureed peas, sweet potatoes, and applesauce, along with boxes of rice cereal and oatmeal piled up high at last week. The school’s fourth graders have been busy with their first community service project of the year: a baby food drive.

This year, 1165 containers of food were collected and will be donated to the Massachusetts Children’s Fund. 

Fourth grade teachers Colleen Griffin, Melinda Kement and Donna McAuliffe have led their students in this project for the past four years.

“It is a perfect community project that students want to help with,” said Griffin. “We usually complete it at the beginning of the year and tie in other curriculum areas. The students bring in baby pictures of themselves to share with the class. The children interview their parents to learn about a cute baby story about themselves and write about it. They also write a baby bio-poem about themselves based upon information their parents tell them.” 

The effort also ties into math as students sort, count and report on the food collected and graph the results using an Excel spreadsheet.

Students do all of the organizational work, explained Griffin. This includes creating posters, designing fliers for school-wide distribution, writing advertisements, and visiting other classrooms to explain the effort as well as to share their advertisements. After the final collections, students write thank you notes to each class for their participation.

The Massachusetts Children’s Fund is a 100 percent nonprofit organization dedicated to providing baby food and supplies to children throughout Massachusetts.

Ben Franklin Visited  in a rare appearance last week during an assembly for grades Kindergarten through fifth. This was made possible through Historical Perspectives for Children, a company that uses actors to portray historical figures. Costumes, slides, and an interactive and entertaining presentation are used for students to catch a glimpse of the lives of the particular person who impacted history.

During Ben Franklin’s presentation, which lasted about 45 minutes, Franklin’s childhood, family, clothing, games, toys, work and inventions were all highlighted.

Facts such as that Ben Franklin had 16 siblings, learned how to swim from a book, and was only seven years old when he invented swim fins (referred to as flippers today) held the interest of the students.

After working as an apprentice for his brother in a printing company and writing for a newspaper, he sailed to America where he started his own printing company at 22 years old. At 42 years old, he sold the business to retire to work on other things he wondered about, specifically electricity which led to his inventing the electrostatic machine.

Students learned that Franklin was always curious, loved to read and to learn; but always looking to do something that would make a difference. Two quotes from Franklin that the students were left with were “Something is not useful if it is not honest” and “What good can I do today?”

A short question and answer period followed the presentation.

Lincoln Street School's Fun Day Factory, a Willy Wonka inspired theme, will be held on Saturday, Oct. 15 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Experience exciting  games, prizes, raffles, inflatables, food and more. Tickets can be purchased at the door.

This column will highlight some of the schools’ many special programs, speakers, events, and community service projects. If you are aware of a program that you would like featured in this column, please email Liz Nolan at lizard211@gmail.com.