Just like Santa, students are stuffing stockings with gifts, seeking to spread the spirit of the season to soldiers in Iraq.

Stuffing Stockings for Soldiers is the name of the project that Beatrice Middle School eighth-graders in Christy Schaaf's and Missy Mahoney's mentor classes have coordinated over the past couple of weeks.

“It's going good. We've got about 60 stockings,” eighth-grader Katie Schleufer said.

Eighth-grader Phillip Cherry said they got the idea from watching Channel 1, a news program aimed at students, and decided as a class to collect various items and sew the stockings to put them in.

“It's been pretty successful,” he said. “We've got a lot of supplies.”

The students got the word out throughout the school about items they were seeking for the stockings, Schaaf said.

Items collected for the stockings included candy and gum, pencils and pens, small notebooks, decks of cards, travel games, microwave popcorn, phone cards, stamps, rolls of quarters and snack foods as well as many other small items.

“I think they worked well. Most of them were really motivated,” Schaaf said of the students.

She said the whole building got involved with the project, with just about every mentor room having students donate a few items. In addition, the student council is donating money for postage as well as making a trip to purchase a few more items so all the stockings have exactly the same things in them, Schaaf said.

In addition to the stockings sewn by the students filled with items, Schaaf said they will include a Christmas card in each stocking and send a framed picture of the class.

She said they finished collecting items on Wednesday and hope to send the stockings off on Monday to the 734th Transportation Battalion, currently serving in Iraq. Schaaf said her brother-in-law as well as two former Beatrice students are serving in that unit.