The tiny tots at the Gilroy Unified School District State Preschool on Ninth Street aren't putting on a play or gearing up for a chapter in African culture. Every Wednesday, they take a break from their regular schedule to welcome artists from the Oriki Theater in Mountain View who share a way of life that most students would not be exposed to otherwise.

Through an arts enrichment program made possible with funding from Arts Council Silicon Valley, E3 Institute and FIRST 5, the preschoolers enjoy music, story-telling and other unique art experiences that increase learning by using all their senses and learning styles - audio, visual and kinesthetic, said Sheryll Ebbs, early education and family literacy administrator for the preschool program.

"The arts and music are so critical," she said. "It's a way of learning for these kids that teaches them to think outside the box."

The band program was recently cut from Gilroy's elementary schools in the wake of drastic budget reductions, but Ebbs hopes that exposing the youngsters to music and culture at an early age will encourage them to explore on their own as they grow older.

Learning to play the drums teaches them rhythm and chanting teaches them counting and boosts their language acquisition, she said.

Even when the artists aren't around, the children's faces lit up when one of their teachers asked them to demonstrate what they learned the previous Wednesday. Feet stomping and hands clapping in unison accompanied chants of "ke ke kule," an African rendition of the American children's song "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes."

"I like when they play the drums," Jared Rubalcaba, 4, said.

"Me too! Me too!" his classmates chimed in.

The Oriki Theater is a community based theater founded by Chike Nwoffiah, an award winning filmmaker and producer, and led by master drummer Tumani Onabiyi, a musician with more than a decade of experience working with young children in the surrounding school districts. Oriki's calendar overflows with performance bookings at schools and children's events. The artists believe that their work sows the seeds for a coming generation of citizens that appreciate and celebrate the richness of diversity. And they learn a thing or two in the meantime.

"They remember the lessons they learned," said Anita Grijalva, assistant teacher. "It gives them an intro to music and exposes them to a different type of culture they don't often see. It's an enrichment that they don't usually get."

Music has a significant impact on students' learning potential, multiple studies have concluded over the years. A collection of studies compiled by Bruce Pearson, music educator, author and composer, investigating the relationship between music, dropout rates, self-esteem, performance on math and language tests and creativity revealed that music positively correlates with all, except dropout rates.

"These studies provide convincing support for the assertion that musical skills and mathematical skills are closely related," Pearson wrote. "It seems clear that students who do well in math also do well in music."

He went on to describe how music education predisposes a child to easier language acquisition.

"It appears that these fundamental music skills (pitch discrimination, tonal memory and singing skills), once developed, also transfer to the learning of a foreign language."

The Arts Enrichment Grants Program provides arts education experiences to nearly 1,500 preschoolers throughout Santa Clara County per year. Funded by FIRST 5, a program that aims to enrich the lives of young children before they reach school age, nearly $125,000 was awarded to eight artists and five arts organization to supply enrichment programs to the county's preschoolers.

"We have been able to provide meaningful arts experiences to roughly 6,000 children (over the years) under the age of 5 throughout the region," said Bruce Davis, executive director of Arts Council Silicon Valley. "I am so excited that we are able to continue to offer these unique arts experiences to our youth in the face of continued cuts to arts programming."

"The artists are illustrating history," Ebbs said. "You make the learning fun and they (the students) love it."

Sara Suddes Sara Suddes covers education for the Gilroy Dispatch. Reach her at ssuddes@gilroydispatch.com or call (408) 847-7158.