Westerly's Holiday Program

It feels good when all your hard work pays off. That’s what happened the evenings of Dec. 6 and Dec. 8 at the Westerly School Holiday Program. Mrs. Engelbrecht, our music teacher, and Mr. Judge, our student teacher from Cleveland State University, put together a magnificent show for all the parents and relatives to see.

This year’s theme was "Christmas is Love." Each class sang holiday songs and played musical instruments. Some classes even danced! The fourth-graders sang songs like "Jingle Bell Rock," "I Saw Three Ships" and "The Holly and the Ivy."

I got to play the alto-xylophone for "Jingle Bell Rock." It’s a difficult song to play because it has a rock beat. My friends and I were nervous because there were so many people and we were also excited to perform what we had spent so many weeks practicing.

After the third- and fourth-grade classes sang, the Fourth Grade Chorus, which has 124 members, sang beautiful songs like "Song of Joy" and "Lights of Hanukkah." The Fourth Grade Chorus is different from the fourth-grade classes because we actually stayed after school every Thursday since the first week of October to rehearse for this show. 

It is so much fun and definitely worth doing because Mrs. Engelbrecht is an excellent music teacher and so is Mr. Judge and we learned a lot from them. They even treated us to a banana split party at our last rehearsal.

This year’s holiday program was a huge success. I felt sad when it was over because that’s the last one I will ever do at Westerly Elementary, but I am now finding myself looking forward to our winter break!

Thank you to all my readers that have been reading my columns since they began in June. I want to wish all of you a Happy Holiday season and a Happy New Year! See you in 2012!