Today's post will wrap up Sing Your Heart Out week! Each day this week, I shared a new song that you can use in your music therapy sessions or music classes. Day 1: It is Time to Sing a Song ~ a song for building communication skills Day 2: I Am An Elephant ~ a [...]
Visual Stimulation Today's song will continue my series on Sense-ational Activities, those that target the five senses. I use this song when I am facilitating visual tracking goals and providing visual stimulation to my clients with severe and profound intellectual disability. Initially, I used this song in UCP's sensory room, which has a tube with water and bubbles that light [...]
Sing your heart out week continues!! Here is a song I use during my instrument playing activities, particularly those involving the xylophone and glockenspiel. I take out the 'B' and 'F' bars and the song fits perfectly. Also, the song lyrics can be individualized for different children using different instruments, for example "Danny plays the drum!" [...]
This song is a crowd favorite for the children I work with! They love, love, love pretending to be animals. So, I wrote this song to allow them to be a quite large one - the elephant. Each verse of the song has them move a certain way like an elephant does. Have a listen... [...]
This week I am on vacation from my job as a music therapist at UCP's Early Beginnings Academy. Yay! But, I'm not off from my work at Wholesome Harmonies! So, I decided this would be a great opportunity to share some new songs with you! Each day this week I will share a new song, [...]
When I come up with new activities for my sessions at UCP's Early Beginnings Academy, I often consult the teacher's lesson plans. Not only do they give me lots of great ideas for new song topics, but it ensures that my sessions are directly lining up with and supporting the classroom curriculum. This week, some [...]
Today I'd like to share one of my most popular songs, and it's about...BODY PARTS! I use this song frequently with the children I work with who have special needs and it's always a hit. For older children, you can make the song more complex by using body parts such as: neck, shoulder, back, and [...]
"Every week had 7 days, every week has 7 days!" The 'Days of the Week' Song is often heard being sung through the hallways of UCP's Early Beginnings Academy. For my preschool and Kindergarten children, this song teaches some very important concepts: - Every week has 7 days - The names of the days of the week [...]
What do you do? The idea for this song came about when I was working with a child with autism, providing individual music therapy. I found that it was easy for her to learn academic skills (numbers, colors, lettters) because of the rote memorization involved to learn the information. However, when it came to questions about how [...]
In light of the excitement surrounding my recent project Rockin' and Readin' at the Library and Rockin' and Readin' at the Library PLUS I thought I'd continue with my theme of early literacy skills, reading, and books. Today's Book 'n Song post is about a book called "My First Book of The Body" by Chuck [...]