Kindergarten on top of pop top collecting contest
<p><strong>Amy and Brian Reed join the Plains kindergarten class to tell them they won the pizza contest for collecting the most pop tabs.</strong></p>
PLAINS – Last week, the community’s efforts to support the Ronald McDonald House came to fruition as the Plains School announced the winners of the Pop a Top for Franklin contest.
The kindergartners won the collection drive with 53,763 can tabs collected. They won a pizza party, which was held earlier this week, courtesy of Amy and Brian Reed, the sponsors of the contest.
“It was just a really good showing of support from the community for the family,” said Annawyn Griffin, the advisor for the Plains branch of Jobs for Montana Graduates, of the contest’s results.
The Reeds were shocked by the total number of tabs collected. There was a grand total of more than 230,000 tabs collected by all the grades of the school. The drive even spread outside the Plains area; the Thompson Falls schools collected a total of 38 pounds of tabs, which were delivered to the Plains school last week.
The contest started as a way for the Reeds to support and offer thanks to the Ronald McDonald House after their son Franklin passed away from leukemia earlier this year. According to Amy, Franklin really enjoyed his time there during treatment and the staff as well as other residents had become like family to them.
“It isn’t just somewhere for the families to go and stay, it actually becomes a home,” said Amy. “It’s something that’s always going to be there for us.”
The money raised by recycling the tabs will go toward Ronald McDonald House stocking the cupboards and refrigerators of their community room as well as funding repairs to the facility. As another part of the donation, the Reeds will be sponsoring the room they stayed in at the House.
Collection of tabs went for approximately three months. Over the course of the drive, collection buckets were placed in each classroom. The students and teachers could dump their tabs into each day and it would be collected by members of Jobs for Montana Graduates, the club who organized the student end of the event, each week.
According to Keelie Crabb, the student organizer of the project, they started on September 13, ending the drive in December and calculating the class totals.
JMG members counted the tabs as they went, tracking each class’s total.
The Ronald McDonald House provides lodging for families with members undergoing long-term medical procedures in another city; this way everyone can stay together without eating up all of their finances on lodging. They are a nonprofit organization that provides their services around the world.
There are hopes to do another drive next year.