In the spirit of the season of giving, the third grades at South Callaway Elementary School have a tradition of performing a community service project in place of exchanging gifts before the holiday break.
This year, third graders at Joplin's Eastmoreland Elementary School will be on the receiving end of that tradition. The third grade classes have been bringing in school supplies - which they will collect until Friday - to send to Joplin.
"We were thinking of a service project to do, and we had just been talking about tornadoes in class in the weather unit, and we decided to adopt a third grade class there," said teacher Cindy Campbell. "Joplin had a video on their school's website that showed the security cameras during the storm that was really great.
"(After we watched it) we told the kids to put themselves in their shoes, and they thought about it and how shocking it would be to lose all their stuff, and they seemed really excited about the project."