The Lion King

WOW I work at an amazing school. During the second week of April all of the teachers and students in grades 2 through 5 pulled off a spectacular feat: preparing and performing The Lion King! 

Zazu and Scar at Pride rock. My camera performs very poorly in the low light of the
theater but for the purposes of this blog that's a good thing, because I can picture
the kids without them being identifiable.

Fourth and fifth grade students auditioned for the speaking roles, and every other child in grades 2 through 5 appeared at least three times during the performance, so as you can imagine it was a huge team effort. A 5th grade teacher wrote the script and directed 1/2 the play, 2nd grade teacher #1 directed the other half and choreographed it all, the music teacher taught all the kids their songs, 2nd grade teacher #2 designed ALL the costumes and set pieces, the art teacher helped out with that, and the rest of us helped them all put their plans into action! 

Kids lining the aisles singing Circle of Life during the dress rehearsal,
attended by Nursery through 1st grades.

Though the main cast had already been rehearsing their speaking parts after school for a month, the rest of it, including costumes, songs and choreography, got pulled together in just a week. 

Dead Mufasa with guilty Simba and Scar

Each grade was assigned a song, and all the grades sang Circle of Life at the beginning and end of the performance, so they had to learn and memorize the music for their songs. Then each class had to learn their choreography— no mean feat considering this included more than 200 kids.

I just can't wait... to be KING.

The same song during the performance, with the second graders turned
into elephants, zebras and giraffes!

Throughout the week the students made their own costumes in class, which involved lots of messy painting, cutting, and hot gluing, with super adorable results. For teachers it was all hands on deck, especially considering quite a few teachers were working on the play all day and needed help covering their classes. Being a specialist teacher meant all my classes were canceled and I was just helping out where needed, which meant I didn't sit down much the whole week! Plus since I'm the unofficial lower school photographer this year I was kept busy documenting the whole thing. I ended up with lots of great photos that I can't post here since they include the kids' clear and smiling faces!

  

 The play really came together when it needed to, and was a spectacular success! The parents, teachers and students were all incredibly proud!

The fifth graders had the hardest song: Be Prepared. But they did a great job
not only singing but also looking evil and scary!

Before the final performance for the parents on Friday at noon I made sure that the slideshow I had put together of pictures of the preparation during the week was playing in the auditorium. Then I ran around and got pictures of each class in their costumes! Here are the classes that had masks and I therefore feel comfortable picturing here:

Elephants, frogs, monkeys and birds!

It was an exhausting week (my FitBit logged soooo many steps) but tons of fun and well worth it! But of course the fact that the next week was Spring Break certainly helped us all get through it cheerfully. One way or another, I'm so thankful and proud to be part of a school that can accomplish so much!