Red, white and blue, and some kazoos too, at Quinn School concert
Students Wayland Leandro, Abel Ferreira, Lucas Alfaiate and Landon Guile bring Mount Rushmore to life Wednesday, June 3. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Anna Plough dresses as Lady Liberty.
Students play the kazoo during "You're a Grand Old Flag"
Benjamin Franklin, right, hosts a competition to determine whether to make a turkey or a bald eagle the national bird.
Uncle Sam leads the chorus in its final song of the night.
Kathryn Laviolette, dressed as a bald eagle, wins a contest to become the national bird.
Zoe Longo, left, narrates the show.
George Washington, played by Salvatore Mellace, speaks on the phone with Betsy Ross to come up with the design of the United States flag.
The concert began with the students playing seven songs on the recorder.
Founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln play songs on the recorder.
Students play the kazoo during "You're a Grand Old Flag."
Playing the recorder.
Students Wayland Leandro, Abel Ferreira, Lucas Alfaiate and Landon Guile bring Mount Rushmore to life Wednesday, June 3. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Anna Plough dresses as Lady Liberty.
Students play the kazoo during "You're a Grand Old Flag"
Benjamin Franklin, right, hosts a competition to determine whether to make a turkey or a bald eagle the national bird.
Uncle Sam leads the chorus in its final song of the night.
Kathryn Laviolette, dressed as a bald eagle, wins a contest to become the national bird.
Zoe Longo, left, narrates the show.
George Washington, played by Salvatore Mellace, speaks on the phone with Betsy Ross to come up with the design of the United States flag.
The concert began with the students playing seven songs on the recorder.
Founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln play songs on the recorder.
Students play the kazoo during "You're a Grand Old Flag."
Playing the recorder.
Wearing costumes depicting historical figures like the Founding Fathers and Betsy Ross, Quinn School fifth graders returned to Colonial America for the retelling of the United States’ founding through songs, short skits and dad jokes.
Friends and families packed the Dartmouth Middle School auditorium on Wednesday, June 3 for the concert celebrating the United States’ 250th anniversary.
The students sang songs like “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Thank You, Soldiers,” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag — a favorite among the fifth graders because they got to play kazoos.
“It was probably my favorite song because I liked listening to the kazoos go ‘do! do’,” said student Kathryn Laviolette.
Students Wayland Leandro, Abel Ferreira, Lucas Alfaiate and Landon Guile brought Mount Rushmore to life, acting as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to tell dad jokes.
“I really like it. It was funny. I got to wear this awful costume, but it’s fun. I just really like my part,” Leandro said. “We did dad jokes, and it was really fun.”
Guile said that he originally auditioned for the Mount Rushmore skit because he wanted to do it for fun.
“I didn’t know it was six pages, and I really liked it,” he said, adding, “I didn’t know how to wear this blazing hot costume.”
Alfaiate noted that they “got some good laughs out of some people.”
Fifth grader Zoe Longo, who played the narrator, helped intertwine the skits and songs, beginning with a conversation between George Washington and Betsy Ross over the design of the flag to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“It was really fun to be able to go back and forth with the fact checker and pretend to know everything, and just have no clue what I’m saying,” she said.
In the show, Anna Plough played the parts of Lady Liberty and who she referred to as “the real Abe.”
“I think it was really fun because I had two costume changes,” she said. “It was really, really fun.”
In one skit, Benjamin Franklin held a contest between a turkey and a bald eagle — played by Laviolette — to decide what the United States’ national bird should be.
“I liked how I got to learn more history on Benjamin Franklin quotes,” Laviolette said, adding that it was also because she had to say exact quotes.
“We had to get them exactly right because if we were wrong, it was just going to seem really awkward because everyone knows the quotes,” she said.
The students started working on the show right after February vacation and auditions for the acting and speaking roles were held last month.
“I only see them once a week for 40 minutes as part of your regular music class, so that makes it challenging to be able to put everything together up until the last week,” said Music Teacher Shirley Byers.
Students at Quinn School put on a June concert every year, choosing to focus on a different theme each time to “try to do something different,” Byers said.
She added, “You only get to celebrate America’s 250th birthday once in a lifetime, so I figured, ‘Let’s do a patriotic concert this year.’”
