Musical Games are some of the most used musical experiences in my repertoire when I work with teens in music therapy.

SO MANY therapeutic goals can be worked into musical games:

Auditory perception goals in Name That Tune,

Social communication goals in Musical BINGO,

and Academic goals in Musical Spacemen (Hangman), just to name a few.

The great thing is that these goals are packaged in a “cool” musical game that is inviting and engaging for teens.

One musical game I created several years ago that is always well received is called Guess Who.

In Guess Who, I create different ways that clients and students can Guess Who the singer or band is.

For example through:

Pictures: I might show a picture of The Weeknd and see if students can Guess Who.

Clues: I might give clues (for example, “This singer rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destiny’s Child”) and see if the students can Guess Who the singer is (Beyonce).

Song Clip: I might sing a line from the Imagine Dragons song “Believer” and see if students can Guess Who the singer / group is.

Then, we reverse rolls and the clients get to work together and come up with their own Guess Who clues and see if the other group members can guess.

This is a way for students and clients to work on social communication skills, auditory perception and listening skills, and executive function skills in an inviting way.

If you found this post inspiring and want more ideas for how to infuse creativity and FUN into your music therapy sessions and music classes with middle and high schoolers, check out the Elevate Email Idea Subscription.

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One of the most classic music therapy interventions is Musical Jeopardy.

It’s familiar, inviting, engaging and fun. Perfect for a practicum student, intern or seasoned clinician to facilitate.

Every year I come up with a new version of this game and use it as I’m getting to know my new groups and clients, and assess them.

In this year’s version I have questions about Bruno Mars, Justin Beiber, and of course Moana. I found ways to work on expressive communication, memory, attention and auditory perception training.

If this piques your interest and you’d like a FREE copy, click here to get a template for use in your own sessions. You can adapt it to fit the musical preferences and goals of your own group, but the ideas on this template will give you a great place to start!

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In my last blog post, I started a brand new series on how to AMP UP your teen music therapy sessions.

I love using fresh, new ideas in my sessions, so I’m happy to share what’s worked well with my tween & teen groups.

Today, I want to share a musical game I created called the ABCs of Music.

It’s a nice ice breaker for a new group of clients or can serve as a warm up activity before moving onto other therapeutic music experiences.

Here’s how I facilitate this game:

1) Gather a stack of alphabet cards that has one letter on each card.

2) Separate your group into two teams and give each team a jingle bell to ring when they have an answer.

3) Explain to the group that you’re going to hold up cards one by one that each have a letter of the alphabet. Their job is to be the first team to come up with a musical artist or band that starts with the letter on the card. So, for example: A – Adele; B – Backstreet Boys; C – Counting Crows, etc. When they have an answer, they can jingle their team’s bell. The first team to answer correctly gets to keep that card.

4) Continue holding up a card for each letter of the alphabet until you have gone through all the letters. The team that has the most alphabet cards at the end wins! You can go through the alphabet cards a few times and change it up by asking teams to name only female artists or only bands from the 80s.

5) After you finish that portion of the game, have each team select one letter card from their pile and a corresponding musical artist or band. Choose a song by that musical artist or band and use that to facilitate a musical experience targeting one of your group’s goals. So, for example, if they chose the letter E for Ed Sheeran, you can use his song “Sing” during a choreographed dance to address gross motor goals.

I love using musical games with my tween & teen groups because not only are they inviting and “cool,” but they allow opportunities to target a wide range of goals. In the ABCs of Music game for example, we’re working on letter identification, expressive language, social skills, group cohesion, impulse control and attention to task.

If you’d like to learn even more musical games to use in your sessions check out Tuneful Teens + Tuneful Teens 2. 

Here’s what Rachel Rambach has to say about Tuneful Teens:
“When I first started out as a new music therapist, the population that intimidated me the most was the tween and teen crowd. That’s why I was so excited when my friend and fellow music therapist Amy Kalas Buser launched her E-Book, Tuneful Teens. Amy provides everything you need — step by step procedures, templates, sheet music, etc. — to implement the interventions in your music therapy sessions. I highly recommend Amy’s book.”

We’re even offering combo packs, which provide you with the best value! Click on the icon below to view our E-Book collection ~

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Today I am at work at UCP when most other people seem to have off, but it is A-Okay because I absolutely love my job. I’ll be home by 6:45pm tonight after seeing private clients and will be ready to start preparing some side dishes for tomorrow!

Today I want to share a super successful intervention that I used with my preteen and teen groups last weekend.

If you have the Tuneful Teens E-Book, you know that I LOVE using musical games with this age group. It is a fantastic way to get clients excited about the activity and a great way to ‘sneak in’ working on other skills (like group cohesion, communication, auditory perception skills, listening, etc, etc.)

When brainstorming ideas with those goals in mind, I decided to put a twist on your regular ol’ BINGO and turn it into musical BINGO.

Keeping in mind the goals of refining auditory perception skills and listening skills, I decided discriminating instrument sounds would be the way to go. I do these types of activities often with my preschool children (I hide instruments behind a board so the children can’t see; they must guess the instrument based on the sound). I also wrote about another auditory perception training activity here.

For MUSIC Bingo, I created the board above using pictures from clip art and West Music. Since I didn’t have enough instruments to fill up the board with pictures, I doubled up and added the instrument name in print. The rules of the game were to listen for the instrument sound (the instrument was hidden behind a large board) and place a marker on either that instrument picture OR name. The first one to fill an entire row down, across, or diagonal “won.”

Both the preteen and the teen groups loved the activity and didn’t want to stop playing!

Earlier this year, I shared my Music BINGO template for Valentine’s BINGO. What other kinds of musical BINGO games do YOU play? Leave a comment below and let us know!

If you’d like even MORE creative session ideas to incorporate into your teen music therapy sessions, you need to check out Tuneful Teens 2! It is chock full of session ideas and resources to get your creative juices flowing. Check it out here:

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Valentine’s Day is right around the corner!

Over the past few days, I’ve shared a few of my favorite V-Day themed interventions. In today’s blog post, I’d like to share the V-Day session plan I created for my tween and teen sessions.

1. Valentine’s Day BINGO

2. Instrument Playing to “Love Story” by Taylor Swift
* (a favorite of this group)

3. Valentine’s Day Songwriting to “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”

4. Social Skills Hearts (see picture above)

– Cut out medium size hearts on pink and red paper

– On each heart, paste a different social skills question. (Check out Tuneful Teens: Creative Ideas for Engaging Adolescents in Music Therapy for the template!)

– On the day of the session, place all the hearts inside a tambourine. Play “Count on Me” by Bruno Mars or “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” by Randy Newman (you know, the one from Toy Story) as you pass around the heart-filled tambourine. When the music stops, the person holding it must take out a heart, read the question aloud, and answer it.

– Continue until each group member has a chance to answer a question. Encourage the group to sing along with you!

5. Relaxation with scarves to “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles

This was a fun session to lead because it generated all kinds of ideas from the group about love and friendship. What are YOUR favorite Valentine’s Day themed activities?

Looking for more inspiration for your adolescent groups? You’ll want to check out this resource ~ Tuneful Teens: Creative Ideas for Engaging Adolescents in Music Therapy

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I am a BIG fan of using musical games in my music therapy session. I use these games to facilitate social interaction and work on group cohesion with my school-age and teen clients.

Today’s post is about one of my favorite creations…Valentine’s Day BINGO (aka HEART)! Here’s how it works:

1. CREATE
First, create various BINGO cards (but instead of BINGO at the top, you’ll write HEART). Each square has a different “love song.” Then, you can use a special hole punch to make little pink hearts to use as markers. Check out Tuneful Teens: Creative Ideas for Engaging Adolescents in Music Therapy for the template. It’s all ready for you to print and use!

2. PLAY
On the day of the session, divide your group into three teams and provide each with a different HEART card. Then, sing and play each song listed on the card. Your clients or students will mark each song as they hear it with a little pink heart marker. Once they get five across, down, or diagonal they have won HEART! (Although we always say – “Everyone’s a winner!”)

This game was a huge hit last year and I look forward to playing again this year!

* Looking for more inspiration for your adolescent groups? You’ll want to check out this resource ~ Tuneful Teens: Creative Ideas for Engaging Adolescents in Music Therapy *

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