BURBANK : ‘A Music Day for Children’ Is Planned

Students at George Washington School have focused on the environment and how they can nurture it, but an event today will help nurture something else in them--a love for music.

“You need to plant seeds in children in different ways, and music is certainly one of those ways,” Principal Joan Baca said.

“A Music Day for Children,” a spin-off of the Burbank elementary school’s environmental science park that started this year, will be held from noon to 3 p.m. today at the school.

Students at George Washington, who do not have their own music program, will be able to try out different musical instruments, play in a jam session and listen to “bio-regional music,” powered by a portable solar generator.

“It seemed to fit together there,” said Dan Chambers, an organizer of the event who said he came up with the idea a month ago.

This summer, 10,000 square feet of asphalt from the school playground was torn up to create an “Environmental Science Park.” The project was funded with the help of the Alliance for Children’s Trust Foundation in Toluca Lake and USC. It is being used to teach students about their relationship with nature, said Kreigh Hampel, a consultant and environmental science instructor for the school.

Hampel and the students have been working this year to turn the barren and sandy land underneath the asphalt into a hospitable plot for plant life.

“They’re getting a first-hand learning experience,” Hampel said. “It’s a slow process, but really, I like it that way.”