Reaching mid-November at OES means we're beginning to move into celebrations of our community's giving nature and the season of light. To prepare her kindergarten students for the upcoming Season of Light Chapel, Music educator and Lower School Service Learning Coordinator Kristen Haferbecker had them explore some opposites: namely loud and soft, and light and dark.

At the beginning of this unit, the children imagined and drew two very different lands: one "Loud Land" and one "Soft Land." "Thunder Land," "Dinosaur Land," "Bunny Land," and "Nice Dolphin, Flower, Mouse Land" were amongst the many choices for these magical places.

After telling a story that illustrated the meaning of the musical terms forte and piano, Ms. Haferbecker split the students into four groups and had them rotate between stations. Each station tasked the students with further developing their two lands: building the borders and outside; drawing the characters that would live in the lands; constructing the buildings or inner contents; and sitting down with their music teacher to answer some deeper questions, such as, "What would a land of all darkness look like?"

(An answer from one of the students: "It would look scary, and like monsters and witches.")

The lesson also centered around the power of storytelling, especially transforming pictures into stories. As Ms. Haferbecker shared with the students, "Everyone can tell stories in their own way, and my way is the musical way."