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 [...]
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, [...]
Growing up, I always loved writing. In particular, I used to write a lot of poetry and always loved seeing how I could make things rhyme and flow. Little did I know that skill would serve me very well in my music therapy work with tweens and teens! I recently started working at a school in [...]
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 [...]
Halloween is approaching and I don't know about you, but I am loving coming up with my session plans this month. If you've read my blog posts in the past, you know I love a good themed session plan. Halloween is especially fun because there are so many interesting characters to incorporate (witches, ghosts, and goblins), themes to [...]
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 & [...]
The ink has barely dried on my Beach Themed blog posts and already I'm realizing people are posting first day of school pics of their kids. That can only mean one thing - it's back to school time! Looks like it's time to shift gears. I'm excited, though, because at the end of August I'll be [...]
'The lazy days of summer are here." Whoever came up with that saying has not met a music therapist in private practice! Although we may tend to have a lighter caseload when clients are out of town, it seems there is never a shortage of things to do. One thing I'm doing this summer is [...]
