Hundreds of local students sing in celebration of music on Music Monday

Music is everything to eight-year-old Eden Wirtz.

The Grade 2 student at Woodcrest Public School loves to sing and joined hundreds of her school-mates who filled the air with melody for Music Monday, a cross-country celebration.

“I love music so much,” said Eden, a self-professed Taylor Swift fan, whose hit song Shake it Off is the youngster’s ultimate favourite.
“It just makes my heart ring and makes me feel happy inside and warm inside and it just gives me a happy feeling.”

Students at Woodcrest sang Music Monday’s official song, We Are One then the choir performed a medley of songs, including My Boyfriend’s Back.

“It made me feel amazing,” Eden said. “I love singing in front of people so they can hear the entire choir together and think about singing and music and how it’s important in life to make people happy.”

Leah Moquin doesn’t like to sing alone, but loves being part of the school choir.

The eight-year-old said music should be a part of everyone’s life, especially in the classroom.

“if we didn’t have music in school it would just be not happiness, just voices – no happy voices, just sad voices.”

Classmate Claire McLeod said Music Monday is really cool, getting to sing in front of the entire school.

“It was really fun,” she said.

“It makes you happy when you listen to music.”

Teacher Jacqui Soulias said Music Monday, created in 2005 by the coalition for Music Education in Canada, stresses the importance of keeping music and song alive and well in schools.

“We’re filling the skies with music and celebrating the fact that we love having music in our schools, so it’s never eradicated from our curriculum.”

That’s something Eden doesn’t want to think about.

“If we didn’t have music in our school, then it would just be a glum school,” she said.

More than 700,000 children across Canada, at more than 2,000 schools, took part in the annual event, which first began 10 years ago. The tradition has also spread to the United States and Australia and is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon.