For 33 sixth graders at Minami Kokura Elementary School in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, playing musical instruments and singing by themselves wasn't enough. They wanted to play for a much bigger audience, but renting a concert hall and inviting people to come and see them wasn't easy to do.

So, they decided to set up a Website so that anybody with Internet access can enjoy their performance.

It took about a month for the kids to plan and create the site, which went online in December 1999. They were guided in their efforts by their teacher, Mr. Hiroyuki Arimoto, 37, who has also encouraged them to hone their musical skills. Mr. Arimoto allowed the students to put together their own Net concert, from choosing the pieces to play to videotaping the performance and designing the Web page.

The students selected four pieces, including "Edelweiss" and a Japanese song entitled "Ware wa umi no ko" (We are the Children of the Sea). Among the 10 instruments they used were the recorder, organ, xylophone, bell, timpani, and accordion. They also sang the choral parts.

The response was much bigger than they expected. As of late January, their unique concert page had received over 1,000 hits.

They received a message from a mother in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost prefecture, who said she enjoyed the Web concert with her sixth-grade son and thought that the students' voices were very touching.

A teacher in charge of a sixth-grade class in Aomori Prefecture said in an e-mail that she thought the kids at Minami Kokura Elementary School were very lucky to have the whole world as an audience.

Tatsuya Kano, one of the student performers, said he was glad to find out that so many people enjoyed their Internet concert.

Photos: Rehearsing in the music room; concentrating hard on playing the xylophone. (Minami Kokura Elementary School)