One of my favorite session activities is using color-coded notation to teach children how to play xylophone, piano, and hand bells.

Here is a video of two children I see for individual music therapy using color-coded notation to play the xylophone (or as my nephew calls it, the “ex-lophone :)). I didn’t need to give them much instruction for how to play – they got the idea right away!

So what goals are we working on during interventions such as these?

For O. (boy) we are working on eye-hand coordination, motor planning, and sustained attention.

For D. (girl) we are working on eye-hand coordination, color identification, and color matching.

How do YOU use color-coded notation during your sessions?