Fuqua School believes the arts are fundamental to a child’s development and, therefore, provides the opportunity for students to participate in the arts from the lower school years to graduation.

According to a press release, teacher Vicky Dotson recently introduced pre-kindergarten students to sound stories. Sound stories are voices of characters, action verbs or sounds in a story represented by musical instruments. Students were introduced to instruments such as the kokiriko, shekere, xylophone, ocean drum, log drum, wood agogo, cabasa, remo drum heads and circular xylophone.

Throughout the story, Fortunately, by Remy Charlip, the children were assigned instruments for a particular word. Examples included airplane, water, swim, run and dig. When the children heard “their” word, they played their instrument. Even Dotson participated in the sound story by playing the slide whistle.

At the end of the story, all students played their instruments together.

“This was a wonderful way for these young students to be exposed to a wide variety of instruments and sounds, and make connections to literature through music,” Fuqua officials said in the release.