The sounds of Christmas filled the Plains School on two occasions last week, the first time on Tuesday, Dec. 14 with the High School Christmas Concert, and for a second time on Thursday, Dec. 16 with the Elementary Christmas Concert.

For elementary music teacher Denise Earhart, Thursday’s performance was a definite success.

“I think it went very well,” Earhart said. “The kids worked hard.”

The concert was from kindergarten to sixth grade, and featured performances by percussion groups and choral groups, as well as a performance by fourth-grade students on recorder. The concert also featured the fifth and sixth grade band, who performed under the direction of high school music director Brittany Majerus.

During the performance, Earhart had a few learning goals for her students.

“We’re working on proper singing technique, as well as rhythm,” Earhart said.

The fifth grade also did a rhythm section, which taught them to read notes and to count note values, and to keep rhythm and time.

Earhart began preparing her students for the Christmas performance almost since the beginning of the school year. This was largely because of the limited time she had with her students, culminated with the fact that the concert would be challenging for a lot of students.

“We only have each class twice a week, and in a 30 minute time frame,” Earhart said. “We have a lot of work to do. Plus they need to be able to learn all of their parts and memorize them.”

Most of all, Earhart hoped that her students learn that music is fun, and it’s enjoyable to sing.

“We’re trying to teach them that music can carry throughout their whole life,” Earhart said. “Some facets, and in some way it always comes back, so if they enjoy it now, then they can continue on through our music program.”

Earhart hopes to build the students’ love of music so they will continue with it through high school.

For now, Earhart will get her students looking forward for their spring concert. Students will also continue studying rhythm right now, and will be studying the different musical families, followed by music history in the fourth quarter for the older kids.

For Earhart, the main goal of the perfomance is to instill a love and enjoyment of music in the students, which she feels the kids have definitely picked up.

“We just try to build,” Earhart said. “I think the kids did a great job. They worked hard and had fun.”

High school music director Brittany Majerus was very impressed with her students after the performances. She felt that all involved had a great time.

“I think it went really well,” Majerus said. “All the kids did great. They had fun. The audience seemed to enjoy it.”

Majerus hoped that the students were able to enjoy performing, and would become more comfortable with it.

Majerus also saw the performance as an opportunity for the students to be challenged.

“I think some of the music was challenging for some of the students, which is good,” Majerus said. “I just tried to, especially with the high school, push them onto something more difficult. They definitely stepped up to it.”