Swan Valley's middle schoolers perform a dance while singing about Ancient Greece, one of the civilizations the archaeologist characters of the play visit during the course of the musical, "Dig It!"
Fifth grader Angela Ream plays the trombone with the fifth grade band. During the course of her band class this year, she learned how to use the seven slide positions on the trombone.
The Swan Valley Elementary preschoolers sing the ABC's while holding up letters of the alphabet.
First-graders Levi Boyd and Noah Urban get into the actions while singing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain."
SWAN VALLEY - At the Swan Valley Elementary spring concert, students from kindergarten to middle school sang, played instruments and even acted in a musical play about ancient history.
"She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain" was one of the songs performed by kindergartners, first and second graders with accompanying actions. The third and fourth grade group sang several tunes, one of which included percussion instruments such as drums and maracas.
The fifth grade band performed "Frère Jacques" as a round, with each instrument playing solo at a different time. Fifth grader Angela Ream said "Frère Jacques" was her favorite song.
"The rhythm part was fun and I liked that it was a round," she said. Ream plays the trombone and has plans to continue with the instrument next year.
Kristen Cottom, Swan Valley's music teacher, said that the success of the concert has been a long time in the making.
"We've been working on this stuff since January," she said. "That was the best the bands have ever performed. I'm really proud of them."
The middle school students did double duty by performing both as a band and as the cast of a musical called "Dig It!" It tells the story of archaeologists learning about different ancient civilizations, guided by the famous fossil Lucy.
Trista Alexander, who played Julie, one of the archaeologists, said that her favorite scene was the opening one of the show.
"It was the most fun for everyone in that scene," she said. The scene starts with the lights off as the archaeologists use flashlights to look for fossils, before they are introduced to Lucy, a talking fossil.
Jalen Kauffman, a sixth grade student who played the roles of several different famous ancient kings, said that the preparation for the show involved a lot more than practicing the music.
"Besides practicing the songs, we tried memorizing our lines and we made the set, too," he said.
Cottom said "Dig It!" really stood out to the students when it came time to choose a musical to perform in the spring.
"They used to do musicals all the time so we went through all the ones we had and this one really spoke to us," she said. "Both the music and the message."
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