The Winter Concert . . .

In mid-February, Stamford held its winter concert: a display of performances from all grades focusing on a variety of winter celebrations, folk tales, and various happy-go-lucky tunes. 

As luck would have it, my second graders played a large part in the celebration as each class was given a different winter holiday to represent. Together we made several props during our classes, helping to  bring the show a strong visual presence.

We made dreidels, fireworks, stars on sticks, candles, fruits and vegetables, suns and earths, and a Kinara. The students were so excited to be relating what they were doing in drama class to our art class.

I think my favorite project out of all of the props we made were the stuffed suns, moons, and earths. 

This class was telling the story of the winter solstice. And at one part, the students form several circles on stage to simulate the earth spinning with the moon and sun on either side. So I had the students in the earth circle make earths, the students in the sun circle make suns, and the students holding up the moons make moons. 

We used oil pastels to color in everything so that they could work on blending colors and the pieces would be super-bright. They traced one side to make the second half. Then we stuffed them with plastic bags and stapled them together. One of my parent volunteers made little handles for them with their names on them. They were awesome! 

Twirling and twirling and twirling!!

It was so nice to see so many parents come out for the 3 days of performances. The first day consisted of grades 6 - 10, the second day was 3 - 5, and the third day (and by far the largest day) was KG2 - 2. I watched the elementary students perform, so I was there for the second and third days.

Prior to the concert, all of the art teachers had their students making tons and tons of snowflakes. The idea was to fill the gym space with snowflakes, to make it look like a winter formal--something you might see in a Glee episode or a John Hughes movie. Alas this did not happen as hanging from the ceiling was not allowed this time, like it was for Midnight. But what we were able to do ended up being alright . . . I would definitely vote for more snowflakes next time.

Even my friend Dhivya insisted on wearing snowflake hands on the last day of performances: haha! She had one of the biggest jobs of all during the entire 3 days. She is one of the music instructors at Stamford, so she was conducting and directing the entire time.

I tried to help out as best as I could outside of assisting the students with creating props and visual pieces. Here is one of my third grade classes practicing their song during art class. Their teacher insisted that I work on this piece with them, so we went through it at least 5 times during our 80 minutes session together. I thought it was so funny! If you can imagine me standing on a chair in front, trying to direct them. Oh boy.

The older students were fun to watch, but definitely not as playful as the little ones. The show opened with a beautiful dance performance. Some of my little fourth graders were in it which was exciting to see!

And I just had to record one of my classes singing Side by Side with their ukuleles: fourth graders. They are my most hard-partying class--my very last class of the week and amped up every time!! I love them: they are hilarious . . . It was so much fun to watch them perform! 

It's amazing how the "age" of a student can change depending on their environment. In my class these students act relatively old, like middle schoolers. But during this performance, and with their parents afterwards, they seemed so young and little to me. 

Speaking of little . . . Look at these tiny sweet faces! On day two, I got to watch most of my second graders perform. I left a little early because I had to teach. But what I did see was great! 

The images above and below are of the kindergarten and first grade classes. They performed pieces based on folk tales. Their costuming was so cute!

I was super-impressed with my second graders who told the story of Kwanzaa! I didn't know that little Oliver could play the bongos so well . . . They were dancing and singing up on stage and having a great time! It was awesome!

So even though it will never snow here and the weather never changes, we still got to celebrate a little bit and feel the warmth of the winter spirit!