Tribune Chronicle / Bob Coupland Annmarie Radachy, 7, second grade, left, and Malia Nemeth, 11, fifth grade, both students at John F. Kennedy School Lower Campus, place hygiene and health items into socks as part of a service project for Catholic Schools Week. The 105 socks filled with items will be taken to the Warren Family Mission for distribution.

WARREN — Second- and fifth-grade students at John F. Kennedy Lower Campus spent the week collecting socks that they filled with hygiene and health items as part of a community service project called “Socks of Love.”

Second-grade teacher Marie Love and fifth-grade teacher Diana Muccio have their classes get together throughout the school year for a “Prayer Buddy” program and complete a project for the school or community, such as making placemats for Thanksgiving for local rescue missions, delivering chocolate and gifts to people at nursing homes and helping to serve meals at the St. Vincent de Paul dining hall.

“Our goal is to find ways to help people in the community. For Catholic Schools Week, we got the whole school involved in a service project of bringing in new socks and putting toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, shampoo and hand sanitizer inside. Each grade at the school got involved and brought in something different,” Love said.

The 35 second- and fifth-graders spent the latter part of this week stuffing socks.

When done, the school had 105 socks filled with items that were being delivered to the Warren Family Mission to distribute where needed.

“I thought it was nice to help other people. We had fun stuffing the socks,” said fifth-grader Amy Sweeney, 10.

Makinley Smith, 10, fifth grade, said the smaller socks were harder to get as many items in but the larger socks could fit a lot inside.

“It’s nice to know we are doing something to help other people who may not have these items,” she said.

Muccio said the Prayer Buddy program aims to help others in the community. She said students each did something different with the sock project and got in one long assembly line to put something different inside each sock that was passed along.

“Some students were stuffing and others were tying the socks. The fifth-graders help the second-graders and lead by example showing them how to do things,” Muccio said.

Love said the second-graders love spending time with the fifth-graders.