BROCKTON — A group of kindergartners at the Mary E. Baker Elementary School sat on a large, navy blue rug, eagerly waiting for Catherine Piazza to hand them a brightly colored, egg-shaped shaker.

As she waded through the pond of young students, Piazza reached into a bag and pulled out the small musical instruments, passing them out one by one.

Piazza made her way back to the front of the classroom and started the music — a folk song from Ghana sung in the language of Akan. As the music played, some students shook their shakers as hard and as fast as they could, while others shook them slowly to the beat of the music.

Piazza visited the class as part of ImagineARTS, a program created by the South Shore Conservatory to bring arts, music and dance education to kindergarten classrooms across Brockton every week.

"It is a 45-minute lesson that is just, from start to finish, completely arts-infused," said Holly Jennings, the director of the program.

Catherine Piazza leads the ImagineARTS lesson.

The program began 10 years ago as a way to mix the arts with each school's literacy and academic goals.

The goal of this lesson was to encourage improvisation and creativity while exposing the children to music from different cultures. Earlier in the class, the students listened to a song called "Mbube," which means "lion" in Zulu, while they clanked wooden sticks together to the music's steady beat.