One group of Florence Bowser Elementary School kindergarteners takes leaps across the classroom, stopping every few feet to take fake naps or sip imaginary tea.

Hands stuck out like paws, a second group of 5-year-olds plods forward steadfastly, focused on the imaginary finish line.

“Slow and steady wins the race,” Kim Baran chants, as the young tortoises — who suddenly erupt in giggles — win the race. Baran is a master teaching artist for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, a nonprofit that sponsors a national learning program, Early Childhood STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and Learning Through the Arts for children between ages of 3 and 5.

Through a grant from Northrp Grumman Corporation, Wolf Trap brought Baran, an Atlanta actress and educator, to Florence Bowser for an artist-in-residency program this week. She worked with four kindergarten classes and teachers daily all week, weaving lessons about measurement into storytelling, acting and singing.

On Friday, the week wrapped up with students using skills built over the past week by acting out the fable, “The Tortoise and Hare.”

Teachers also got a takeaway lesson, said Florence Bowser kindergarten teachers Mary Jo Basie. By involving classroom teachers in the program, they learned new skills to wrap into their traditional instruction, Baran said.

“We spend all this money searching for the next great technology and it’s right here all the time … and there is no cost involved,” Basie said. “All they have to do is use is their imaginations.

“This gives us so many tools we can use in the classroom,” she said. “When students come in with a lot of pressures, these activities help them forget and have fun for a few minutes.”