At the 2024 Lower School Winter Program, our Junior Kindergarteners (JK) through fourth graders embraced the theme of coziness in this year’s winter program, Cozy. The children sang cozy songs about dreams, hot chocolate, mittens, red birds, favorite things, and sweaters. Students also sang songs to celebrate the winter holidays.
This year, Lower School Music Teacher Dr. Katy Nichols collaborated with Literacy Coordinator Liz Crowder to melt both music and literacy skills together under the cozy theme. With Crowder, students wrote about what would be their perfect cozy day and some of them shared this writing during the program. Learn more about the cozy collaboration here!
The Beasley students kicked off with an all-school song that is a hit across grade levels: A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman. Next, third- and fourth-grade choir sang the classic Sleigh Ride with members of the MICDS advanced strings orchestra, Virtuosi, and some members of the Upper School band. Head of School Jay Rainey was a featured percussionist on the iconic whip part of the song. Following, third graders played the barred Orff instruments to accompany the JK and Senior Kindergarten (SK) students on their Hanukkah song, Burn Little Candles. The third graders also made a human menorah.
Getting to our youngest musicians, our JK/SK students made hot chocolate mugs to use during their song, Hot Chocolate. Second graders sang a song for Diwali, Aeyaya Balano Sakkad. First grade made beautiful cardinal birds under the direction of Lower School Visual Arts Teacher Sarah Garner for the song Red Bird, and second grade was able to do body percussion while singing the song, too. Both grades reminded us to no longer feel sad by thinking about My Favorite Things.
Our fourth graders rocked it out on the barred Orff instruments to Mbira Jam. “It took a lot of cooperation and mallet skills for all 45 students to share the instrumentation together,” said Dr. Nichols. “They sounded amazing!” After that, the third and fourth graders sang Ugly Sweater, a humorous two-part song about an ugly holiday sweater. This was followed by Mittens, where some fourth graders played ukulele, and the third and fourth grades sang while it snowed. “Timothy Henderson, Theater Technical Director, made a new snow mechanism for us this year, installed, and loaded it as a special gift for the children in the winter program,” said Dr. Nichols.
“The updating of the snow cradle was a wonderful experience,” Henderson said. “I was able to use this project to help teach students of the Upper School Seldom Scene shop about new techniques using tools we already have and the safety preparation and implementation of a rigging system, all while helping out the younger students that might someday be members of Seldom Scene themselves. This project perfectly set up a way for us to learn in preparation for challenges we will face building our next set for Hadestown while helping others.”
Lastly, Lower School ended the Cozy celebration with their traditional peace song, Circle the Earth (With Peace). While Mr. Rainey played the piano, second graders shared heritage languages, and JK-fourth grades wished for “peace the whole world over.”
Congratulations to all of our Lower School singers and musicians, and thank you to the many who helped make the Beasley Winter Program a success! Upper School Digital Design students did a phenomenal job designing the two versions of the program here and here, Kathleen Baker was a wonderful piano accompanist, and many teachers helped behind (and in front of) the scenes. A huge shoutout, of course, goes to Dr. Nichols for all of her hard work to bring such a magical winter program to life!
What a cozy performance it was that Nichols sums up well by answering the same writing prompt that Crowder gave students: “On my perfect cozy day, I will sing and make music with our wonderful, fun, smart, focused, and musical Beasley students! The winter program is a depiction of my perfect cozy day with the Beasley student body and the Beasley community. Hearing the children make beautiful music brings me such joy!”
We wish all of the MICDS community a cozy and harmonious holiday break! May each of you experience your own perfect cozy day!
Check out the full performance below.