UAMS Head Start Singers Serenade Chancellor

By Ben Boulden

 

After listening to UAMS Kennedy Head Start children sing Christmas songs, Chancellor Dan Rahn reads a handmade card the group gave him.

Dec. 19, 2012 | The holiday spirit entered into the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) today with the energetic voices of 18 UAMS Kennedy Head Start preschoolers singing classic Christmas songs.

“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” Chancellor Dan Rahn, M.D., said as he stepped out of his office to greet the children. “Look at these smiling faces!”

Accompanied by guitar, the children, many of them wearing Santa hats, enthusiastically opened with “Up on the Housetop,” then sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Jingle Bells” and “I Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

They rang their sleigh-bell wrist bands while delivering their rendition of “Jingle Bells.”

About two dozen UAMS employees gathered around to listen, take photos and even sing along with the carolers.

Rahn thanked the children for their performance and for an oversized, handmade Christmas card they gave him that he placed high up on a shelf for display in his outer office.

He then posed with the children for photographs, and held out a jar full of jelly beans so they could take some of the candies as holiday treats before they left.

Since 1998, UAMS has run the Head Start-Early Head Start program in Pulaski County under director Mary Kaye McKinney. The program’s 22 locations, including Kennedy Head Start in south Little Rock, serve more than 1,000 students from low-income homes. Head Start offers health, education and social services to its students.

The caroling is now a 12-year tradition at the university during the holiday season.