APPLETON, Wis. (WFRV) – Some middle schoolers in Appleton are bringing monsters to life. It’s an art project that connects older kids at Wilson Middle school to younger ones at nearby Dunlap Elementary.

“Some Kindergartners from Dunlap drew some monsters,” explained Sophia Miller. She, along with her classmates, helped bring those monsters to life.

“We had to take some tracing paper, and we traced them, and we made some patterns,” said Miller.

It’s a painstaking process to make sure each part is just exactly right.

“This one took about a week,” said Alice Hendrick. She pointed to her friend, who managed to make three. “Getting to learn each of the stitches (takes time) because this one is different than this one, and this one,” she explained to Local 5’s Barrett Tryon.

On the outside, it looks just like another fun art project. Hidden inside, however, it’s helping teach life lessons.

“I think making connections with younger and older kids, with children at different schools, is important. Being collaborative is extremely important,” said teacher Pannayiota Guigley.

As she knows, that can be a hard one to make when you’re in middle school and just trying to fit in.

“It sounded really fun because I’d been thinking about doing sewing lately, and this was a really nice way to enter into new territories,” said Miller.

And in the end, making monsters not so scary after all.

The students hand-delivered the stuffed animals on Friday morning. The whole project took about a month to complete. The hope is to include more schools in the project next year.