May Moore Primary School partnered with Long Island Cares to kick off May Moore Kindness Week with a Cereal Box Challenge. As part of the event, the school collected a whopping 1,113 boxes of unopened cereal – far surpassing their goal of 1,000 boxes –   to create a huge domino chain. The chain of boxes was set up in the hallways and gym during the school day on Feb. 10, so all students could view it in action. Once the chain was completed, the boxes were donated to local food pantries through Long Island Cares.

Every year in February, May Moore’s Positive Behavior Committee, co-chaired by Dana Grafstein and Melissa Greenfield, hosts Kindness Week. This leads up to P.S. I Love You Day, which promotes positive messages of love, acceptance and community. Each day of Kindness Week not only features a different theme that revolves around acts of kindness, but also serves as a spirit day, where students can dress up to show their support. As students brought in cereal boxes to donate, they received note cards to design, which included kind, thoughtful messages signed by each student. They then taped their messages to the front of the boxes and added it to the donation collection.

“Through this special week, we strive to promote kindness and empathy at a young age, hoping to stop bullying in its tracks,” teacher Dana Grafstein said. “This year, we wanted to extend the activities we do within our school into the community in a way that would also be fun and memorable for our students. As part of our Kindness Week, we wanted to choose a food that we know most kids really like, and that our students would feel other kids would love to have. In this way, they made more of a connection to the food drive itself. Our hope is that when their box finds its way into the hands of someone in need, it will put a smile on their face.”

The domino chain itself served as more than mere entertainment.

“Our students were able to see that they collected enough cereal boxes to go through our entire school. As the first box was pushed over, the domino effect was in full swing, and the students saw that kindness has a domino or ripple effect in the world. This chain reaction starts when someone is kind to another person and this kindness inspires others, which in turn inspires others and so on. The cereal boxes are a visual representation of how far this kindness ripple can travel.”

Date Added: 2/27/2025