Head O’ Meadow Elementary School students collected approximately 1,655 items as part of a school-wide food drive for Thanksgiving.

Held from Monday, November 10, to Thursday, November 20, the food drive encouraged students across all grades to make donations to FAITH Food Pantry.

Head O’ Meadow staff members created a large turkey, affectionately called Turkey Tom, decorated with a bright yellow beak and colorful feathers, to display in the lobby for the drive. On either side of Turkey Tom were boxes designated by grade level.

As students came into school throughout the week and a half of the drive, they dropped off food items such as cereal, instant mashed potatoes, stuffing, crackers, cookies, sardines, and more.

Head O’ Meadow Behavior Interventionist Lindsay Knauf, who partnered with Head O’ Meadow Language Arts Consultant Robyn Notaro to run the drive, said students would consistently bring in bags or cans of food at a time.

Students would excitedly line up or crowd around the boxes, ready to put food into their grade’s collection box. Knauf said students would sometimes come back at the end of the school day to drop off more food.

The food drive also doubled as a friendly competition — whichever grade brought in the most food got an extra recess.

Knauf and Notaro counted the donations by grade and put them together at the end of each day. They tracked how many items each grade level brought in, and made a chart to show off their data.

The chart, labeled “Kindness Starts at HOM,” updated every day of the drive. Students would look forward to checking the chart when they came into school to see where they stood in donations compared to the other grades, according to Knauf.

“The students are doing a great job, they’re just super enthusiastic about it,” Knauf told The Newtown Bee on November 18. “The families have been super generous with how much they’ve donated so far, and we couldn’t be more grateful.”

Knauf added that they collected money if needed, but had $100 to drop off with the next round of food donations. Parents were welcome to donate gift cards or checks for the drive and support FAITH Food Pantry however they could.

Notaro said students collected over 500 food items after just four days of collection. By November 18, she hoped they would get another 500 before the drive ended that Thursday.

However, the Head O’ Meadow community blew that number out the water, raising over three times that amount by the end of the drive.

With the passion from Head O’Meadow students and the number of items they raised together, Knauf called the drive “a great success.”

This was just one of many recent efforts from the Newtown community in donating food and other items to FAITH Food Pantry.

FAITH President Lee Paulsen said donations have been “coming in like crazy” for Thanksgiving. The local food pantry has received donations from local restaurants, businesses, and organizations such as Cosmic Cafe + Smoothie Bar, All Star Transportation, and House of Harrison, among individual donations from Newtown residents.

Paulsen called the outreach “totally unbelievable.”

“We’ve never been this lucky,” Paulsen said. “I don’t have to words to say how terrific every person in town has been towards the food pantry. The community has been absolutely wonderful. It’s just amazing.”

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.