Did you know that 5,276 pennies placed side by side would measure one kilometre? Or that you would have to stack about 2,740 pennies to touch a ceiling three metres high?
These are some of the fun “penny facts” students at Robert Moore School have been hearing during morning announcements every day since October to remind them to bring in their spare change for the Easter Seals Society.
“We tell them every morning that a penny doesn’t add up to much, but when you have a mass of pennies, it makes miracles happen,” said Deborah Deschamps, a speech and language teacher at the school.
In fact, students across the region are showing their “Penny Power” once again this year during the Easter Seals’ second-annual fundraiser which runs Feb. 9-27.
About 80 classes across the district are participating by keeping a bucket for spare change in their classroom.
“Kids will bring in change, not just pennies, necessarily,” said Christa Werenko, chair of the Rainy River District Council for Easter Seals.
At the end of the three weeks, the buckets are collected and counted. “The top fundraising class in each school wins a pizza party,” Werenko noted.
As an additional incentive, the top fundraising school in the Northwest region will receive a commemorative plaque of the newspaper article about their success, she added.
While the campaign doesn’t officially start until Monday, Robert Moore School has gotten a jump start on the activities.
“We started in October,” Deschamps said. She and school librarian Jackie Dupuis-Brandli have been organizing the fundraiser there and have a number of exciting events planned for next week.
“We’ve been having a lot of fun with it,” Dupuis-Brandli said.
Every day, each class sends one student down to the main hallway with the change collected from that classroom to pour it into a large Plexiglas case on display there.
“The enjoyment for the kids is to watch the pennies getting bigger and bigger,” Deschamps said.
As well, the school will have a “Penny Power Day” next Friday (Feb. 13). Children in the primary grades will do various activities, including “Pin the leaf on the penny,” penny bingo, a colouring contest, a penny story, and math and science experiments involving pennies.
The junior grades will have a sock hop that afternoon while the senior ones will have a dance that evening. Kids at both events will be encouraged to bring a roll of pennies.
“We went really gung ho this year simply because we do have a student in this school with a wheelchair, and he has benefited from the Easter Seals program,” noted Deschamps.
“And we’ve had disabled students in the past.”
Having a disabled student in the school helps children see the importance of the Easter Seals Society, Deschamps said.
“It’s brought more awareness to them; that all this money they’ve raised goes to kids like him,” she noted. “This equipment is really expensive for them.”
Expensive, indeed. A manual wheelchair can cost anywhere from $1,600-$5,000. A ramp to the front door of a home costs from $2,000-$8,000 while a van lift can costs from $3,000-$25,000.
There are more than 100 children in Northwestern Ontario who benefit from Easter Seals.
The society helps children, youth, and young adults with physical disabilities achieve their full individual potential and future independence.
Easter Seals funds disability solutions through financial assistance, summer camp, the Recreational Choices funding program, research, advocacy, and public and consumer education.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
