While the final tally won’t be ready until sometime next week, preliminary reports indicate that the Hamilton City School District’s annual Fill That Bus food drive will be another great success.

“We filled an entire bus the first week,” said Kathy Wagonfield, principal at Ridgeway Elementary school. “This week we filled another bus and have begun to fill our third bus.

“Many kids bring in one canned good every single day, regardless of the incentive, which is our goal,” she said. “We do good things because we want to and like to do good things, not because we get something in return — That’s just icing on the cake.”

Each school created its own series of incentives and special days to encourage participation.

At Highland Elementary School, the most successful day was “Game Day,” a first for the school, in which any student who brought in five cans of food could also bring in their favorite board game or electronic game, and teachers set aside time for the children to play.

“We used the theme of Gifts from the Heart and students were able to participate in a number of activities if they brought in canned goods and other nonperishable items, said Jamie Kunz, principal at Fairwood Elementary. “During the collection students were able to wear a hat one day if they brought something in, we also wore silly socks, and are even going to do a ‘can-can’ dance down the hallways tomorrow to drop off our items.

“We have exceeded our goal of 40 boxes to fill the bus and currently have over 50 boxes of food ready for donating,” she said. “Our students have embraced the concept of service learning and helping others by participating.”

Ridgeway tried a new incentive with “Mystery Teacher Day.”

“Each class that had 25 or more canned goods was able to participate,” Wagonfield said. “A teacher from the first floor switched with a teacher on the second floor for 30 minutes and taught about hunger and service learning.

“Another day we did canned good calisthenics on the morning news and each student followed along in their seat using two canned goods as weights as they followed along with our physical education teacher,” she said.

The first week of the drive, Riverview Elementary encouraged students to bring specific items from the Shared Harvest Food Bank’s list on certain days in order to participate in incentives like Sports Day and Mismatch Day. Katy Bretz, second grade teacher reported that two students who had been sick earlier in the week made a special effort to bring the items they missed even though the incentives had expired.

“I found it heart-warming that they were more interested in making sure people had their items rather than being able to participate in the dressing up portion of the event,” she said.

Going into the final days of the drive, Riverview had already gathered over 50 boxes — 40 are required to fill one bus, according to Principal Mary Anne Hughes.

Aaron Hopkins, principal at Crawford Woods Elementary, said he was amazed at the generosity of his students, considering that many of them are recipients of food programs.

“Crawford Woods receives 95 food bags a week for students that need extra food from Shared Harvest,” he said. “The students get these bags on Friday and then take them home with them for the weekend.

“Also, 89 percent of our student clientele is on a free or reduced lunch plan, so the Fill That Bus campaign actually benefits many of our students and student families,” he said.

On Tuesday morning, bus drivers in the district will donate their time to go to each school to gather the boxes of food collected to transfer to a truck from Shared Harvest Food Bank.