Today I'd like to share an intervention from one of my individual music therapy sessions at UCP's Early Beginnings Academy. This song was written by my former intern, colleague at UCP, and friend, Amber Ewers and she has graciously allowed me to share it with you today. The first goal we are working on during this [...]
Letter songs are always a hit with my children at UCP's Early Beginnings Academy. Learning the alphabet and recognizing letters are a huge topic for any preschooler or kindergartener! The teachers at Early Beginnings use a program called BELL (Building Early Language and Literacy) to teach phonological awareness, letter recognition, print awareness, and reading skills. I [...]
Shapes are a very important topic for my children at UCP. Circles, squares, triangles - you name it, they're learning about it! Here is a song called "Shapes, Shapes" (how creative!) that I wrote to help facilitate the process of learning shapes. Click here if you'd like to purchase the sheet music and use this song [...]
As I sit here and work on a new song about compound words for my Kindergarten class, I think back to the question...why do I do this? Why do I push so hard to use original songs in my music therapy sessions with children with special needs? Here are a few of the most important [...]
Last week the children at UCP's Early Beginnings Academy had the privilege of having a guest artist! Pedro, percussionist from University of Miami, came to visit the children and show them a variety of latin instruments. Here were some of the highlights... First, we heard the snare drum... We explored sounds that were soft and [...]
In my group and individual music therapy sessions at UCP I have the opportunity to co-treat with amazing occupational therapists. We discuss often how their occupational therapy (OT) goals and objectives can be addressed during my sessions. Because of the increasing number of children we see on the autism spectrum, sensory integration and sensory processing disorder [...]
Multisensory Stimulation I recently got back from vacation in beautiful Naples with my boyfriend. This trip inspired me to do a post on one of my favorite themes for my summer music therapy sessions - a Trip to the Beach! I have used this session plan for groups of children on the autism spectrum and [...]
Transition songs are a very important part of the daily routine for children, both within and outside of the music therapy session. I cannot tell you how many times singing "Everybody Sit Down" in a quiet voice has helped herd rowdy children back to the circle after a movement activity. I hear teachers singing "Clean [...]
I have been SO excited to write this blog post! A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Target and as always came face to face with the Dollar Section. This is extremely well planned out on Target's part, because before you can get to any other section of the store, you must pass [...]
I love being a music therapist for children with special needs. One of the main reasons is that I have the opportunity to create fun, educationally relevant songs and interventions. The administrators and teachers at UCP love that I am able to support the curriculum by creating songs that target specific academic concepts and are catchy and easy to memorize. I've [...]
