KEARNEY, MO - Fifth-grader Andrew Shepherd smiles when he talks about the new playground at Kearney Elementary School. It has a rock wall and three slides — equipment that fits little kids and big kids alike.

“The first day, everybody wanted to play,” Andrew said. “They were pushing their way through.”

The former playground, which had been in place since the 1970s, was designed for younger children.

“There was nothing for the bigger kids to play on,” said Carol Taylor, a mother of a Kearney Elementary first-grader.

In addition to the new playground, Kearney Girl Scout Troop 3101and the AT&T Pioneers, the volunteer arm of AT&T, painted a new foursquare box and a map of the United States on the ground.

Read more about the effort here .

Other tidbits from the article:

• The Kearney Elementary PTO, students and teachers began raising money for the new playground in December of 2006 with their first ever Snowflake Festival, for which all the classes in the school put together baskets to be auctioned off.
• Raising money continued with a spell-a-thon and the Pennies for Playground project. Classes raised $800 with the Pennies for Playground project.
• The Kearney Elementary PTO received several large donations from parents.
• Remington Steel donated the concrete, McKown-Gordon Construction donated the labor and equipment to tear down the old playground, and Miracle Recreation matched the money raised for the new equipment.