People could hardly find a parking spot at the Dartmouth Middle School Thursday night as cars overflowed into the Town Hall parking lot. The holiday concert featured several fun and light-hearted Christmas songs performed by the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

The concert was the culmination of three months of practice. Chorus Director Tara Thomas said that after singing was postponed during Covid, she wanted the concert to feature music that the children would enjoy singing. 

The music featured catchy selections such as “Jingle Bell Sleigh Ride” and “The Christmas Rush,” an ode to the hectic and consumeristic side of the holidays, which the chorus performed while holding shopping bags and receipts. 

“I thought they did fantastic,” she said. “I was very proud of them.”

Directing three grades at once is no easy feat, she said, but if there’s one lesson she’s learned after teaching chorus for 27 years, it’s to have “lots and lots of patience.”