Boogie Woogie Fun with Kindergarten Fall Performance

A spooky - but fun - ambiance enveloped the Taylor Performing Arts Center as Kindergarten students gathered on stage donned in gray, white, and orange tie-dyed pumpkin shirts for their annual fall performance. In the audience were their families and fifth-grade buddies.

With Lower School music teacher Rachael Jungkeit on the keyboard, the students opened the interactive performance with On a Dark and Stormy Halloween Night followed by the songs, Aiken Drum and The Pumpkin Vine. The spooky ambiance picked up as the students used drums, maracas, wooden sound tubes, and other instruments to recreate the sounds from the book The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything written by author Linda Williams. The performance ended with The Boogie Woogie Ghost, which they performed in step with their buddies.

The Halloween fun did not end there as the students and their families moved over to the Dining Hall for an art show and reception. On the tables were an array of pumpkin-inspired art pieces that the students crafted in class with art teacher Sue Bennett 1973. As the students have been learning about artist Yayoi Kusama, they designed colored pumpkin outlines on a canvas background and pumpkins filled with splashes of black and white dots. The pumpkins used for the art show were all hand-picked by the students during a class trip to Buttermilk Lane Farm. 

In addition, students created clay pumpkins with beads, flower collages with tissue paper, orange construction paper pumpkins during their Makerspace class with the late Claire Rich, and a community pumpkin for all the students to design with dot sticks.

“The fall performance is a wonderful tradition in the Kindergarten class, and I am glad to continue it each year,” noted Mrs. Bennett. “The artwork created by the students is truly one-of-a-kind, and they put a lot of effort into each piece that makes it unique.”