Shawn Fies, music teacher at Northwestern Elementary, wrote a musical for his third grade students.

"Over the Hill" takes place on a farm in rural New Tripoli or New Try-poll-eye as stated by Veronica Alden, played by student Maggie Mauro.

The plot begins on the Brown farm where corn, sheep, chickens, pigs and cows are competing against each other for the farmer's (played by Skylar Shook) attention.

Everyone wants to be the farmer's favorite.

As each group of animals or plants competes to become the farmer's favorite, they also learn about the water cycle, metamorphosis, erosion, literature, mathematics and more.

The corn, students from Laura Luca's class, learned how the water cycle helps them get water to grow.

Students from Kim Firkal's class learned about metamorphosis of a chicken from an egg to an adult.

Jacob Bennett's students played the role of cows and learned about creating a complex machine from multiple simple machines.

Meanwhile, the sheep, represented by Marisa Bartholomew's class, professed their intelligence because unlike the pigs, they were always clean and smart as they all sat around in their chairs reading literature.

The pigs, played by students in Jodi Chandler's class, talked about erosion as the farmer was rinsing the mud off them and providing more mud for them to roll around in.

Throughout the story the farmer would appear with his trusty dog, Billy, who was played by Stefano Conigliaro.

At the end of the musical, the plants and animals lined up to hear which of them were the farmer's favorite, only to learn that the farmer's favorite was his dog, Billy.