What happens when you combine music and physical education with kindergarten and first grade students? Students demonstrated for their regular classroom teachers on Thursday at Douma Elementary.
Ruth Thomas, a physical education teacher, and Teresa Thostenson, a vocal music teacher, collaborated on merging a drumming activity between the two classes. The activity taught students to follow a beat and directions, Thomas shared. "And it's fun."
With one day to learn the routine developed by Thostenson, students used sticks, buckets, and rubber balls to make their joyful noise. Today, students performed to "Uptown Funk." They formed two lines with their improvised drums in the middle. With a teacher on each side directing, the music started and students clicked their sticks, beat softly on their drums, and hopped to the beat as they moved down the line. Students at the end had to race back to the starting point.
The drumming activity included approximately 60 students from each school neighbor (clusters of six classrooms). During the first performance of the day, several first graders thought the activity was fun and hoped to do a repeat performance in the future.
