I hope you've been having a great summer so far! My little family of four just returned from a trip to my hometown of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and we had a blast. It was a fantastic trip where I had the opportunity to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen in over twenty years. I'm still buzzing [...]
Did you have a chance to try out any of the Moana-themed session ideas I shared in last week's blog post? If not, check out the post to see how you can use rainbow bells and the song "How Far I'll Go" to address attention goals. As I was brainstorming more ways to use "How [...]
I don't know about you but I was a little bit relieved when Moana came out and we could finally put the music for Frozen away! There's only so many times you can sing "Let it Go" in a lesson or session, am I right? Because Moana is so popular, I did some brainstorming to [...]
If you've been following the WH blog for the past few years you know that I love to incorporate rapping into my sessions with tween and teen clients. I use rapping to help clients explore their emotions, increase communication skills, and facilitate self-expression. It can be as simple as giving a prompt or sentence starter, providing a [...]
Don't you just love "Can't Stop the Feeling?" by Justin Timberlake. It is so darn catchy and instantly puts me in a good mood when I hear it. I used the song in my sessions yesterday and it was a huge hit. The clients (children in grades K-5) loved it AND it was incredibly effective in helping [...]
Session planning is one of my favorite things about being a music therapist. I love the process. We start out with a client need and corresponding goal. Then we use our creativity to see how we can address that goal musically. I love everything that goes into that process - writing original songs for my younger clients, [...]
One of my main goals with Wholesome Harmonies is to provide resources to support and empower music therapists. In particular, MTs who feel stuck when it comes to planning for their sessions with teen clients or who feel like they want to "take it up a notch" from what they're already providing. With that goal [...]
Halloween is right around the corner and there is a hint of Fall in the air (yipee!). Here in Miami that just means the humidity has dropped slightly, but I'll take it! Come on over and grab some free Halloween intervention ideas here and then check out this new idea I came up with: It's called the [...]
In addition to offering music therapy services, another thing I love to do is offer adapted music lessons to children and teens with ASD. I've been teaching piano lessons to a teen and recently was starting to feel stuck with the lesson book. Plugging through it week after week was becoming a bit dry. Have you [...]
What pop songs are you digging right now? Currently I'm loving "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake and "Try Everything" by Shakira. Anyone else? Sometimes it can be really hard to find songs that we can bring into our music therapy sessions. In my case, they need to fit the following criteria: Have "appropriate" lyrics & [...]
