Natalie Reynolds | Mar 09, 2016


North Addington Education Centre has started a junior music group for playing the ukulele and singing. The club meets twice a week at lunch to practice a variety of classic pop and folk songs. Practices will become more frequent as they prepare for performances.

Grade 3/4 teacher and co-founder of the ukulele group, Mr. Reynolds, is happy to revive music in the school environment. “In the past number of years, the arts have been largely ignored and underfunded due to the increased focus on literacy and numeracy. Madam Choma and I wanted to provide an opportunity for students to learn some basic music theory on a new instrument and to perform in our school talent show. Through the generous donation from the North Addington Guild, we’ve been able to purchase a number of ukuleles and guitars to start our stringed instrument club.”

The North Addington Guild makes a yearly donation to Arts education for North Addington students using revenue from their Arts Showcase, which takes place at the school.

Students in the ukulele group are already showing a lot of progress and are really enjoying their experience so far.

“The ukulele sounds really pretty”, said grade 6 student, Amber Verbruggen.

“I like the feeling of it and how you can get into it”, said grade 5 student Julia Cuddy.

Grade 6 student, Jeremy Pelicos, said that he joined the group because he “thought it would be fun”.

When asked what the club has learned so far, Alyssa Borger said, “We learned Am, F and C with our hands”. The ukulele club is planning to combine forces with the secondary choir for their talent show performance.

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