Is it feeling festive where you are?

I’m about to celebrate my first cold Christmas in twenty years, and I’m pretty excited about that.

(It’s much easier to get in the holiday spirit when it’s snowing, rather than sweltering!)

I’m busy facilitating both in-person and virtual music therapy sessions, and planning a virtual holiday show. For my middle and high school students, I love to bring in a mix of classic holiday songs, as well as those sung by popular artists.

Here are some Christmas pop songs that you’ll want to check out if you work with tweens and teens:

Like It’s Christmas by Jonas Brothers – your clients can clap the rhythm pattern in the accompaniment

Cozy Little Christmas by Katy Perry

Mistletoe by Justin Bieber

That’s Christmas To Me by Pentatonix – I show my clients the official music video and then ask them to share their favorite holiday memory

God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/We Three Kings by Bare Naked Ladies featuring Sarah McLachlan

All I Want For Christmas Is Your by Mariah Carey

You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Gwen Stefani featuring Blake Shelton

Fa La La by Justin Bieber featuring Boyz II Men

Make It To Christmas by Alessia Cara

Christmas Makes Me Cry by Kacey Musgraves – an important song to have in our toolbox, because the holidays may bring up a variety of different emotions for our clients

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays by NSYNC

And some Hanukkah Songs:

Candlelight by The Maccabeats

Happy Hanukkah by Matisyahu

Latke Recipe by The Maccabeats

All About That Neis by Maccabeats

These are some fun songs to sprinkle in with your more traditional ones. Happy Holidays!

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Christmas is right around the corner (do you even need me to tell you that?) and our holiday sessions are in full swing!

We’re jingling bells, ho-ho-ho-ing on the kazoo, and playing Holiday Musical Pictionary.

I recently started working at a preschool in Miami, where I provide music therapy for the 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old classes.

Tomorrow is their Holiday Show and I wanted to showcase something very special for the parents and families.

With preschoolers in the past, I’ve done a Holiday Spectacular that featured multicultural songs and a performance of the Nutcracker (complete with original choreography, music, and set design).

This year, the preschool children will be performing “The First Noel” on hand bells.

I wanted to share this because it’s a great choice for a holiday performance for a few reasons:

• First, if the children are playing the melody, it uses all eight bells. I love doing songs like “Jingle Bells,” but the chorus only uses five of the hand bells.
• Second, for the majority of the song, it moves in stepwise motion. There aren’t many leaps in the melody, which makes it easy for the children to anticipate when it’s their turn to play.
• Third, the melody repeats itself twice. This makes it easy for you as the teacher, because you don’t need to juggle multiple sheets of music. This also makes it easy for the children, because they’ve become very familiar with the melody due to its repetition.

I’m looking forward to our Holiday Show tomorrow!

We’ll be singing lots of holidays carols, but I’m most looking forward to the parents watching their children read real music notation and play the hand bells.

The post Hand Bells For The Holidays appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.

I’ve been on a session planning kick lately.

Even though I have almost thirteen years (!!) of session plans saved up I still love coming up with new ideas, writing new songs and thinking of more creative ways to help my clients meet their goals.

Lately, my three-year-old daughter has been really into the Nutcracker. She’s been requesting we play the music to the ballet so she can dance in her ballerina costume. This inspired me to see how I can use the music of the Nutcracker to work on the attention and auditory perception goals I have for my school-age clients.

Coming up with the session ideas was easy. Coming up with ways to make them cool? Not quite as easy.

Here are some of the best ideas I came up with that were well received by my students:

Listening sheets:
Since my main goals are to improve attention and auditory perception skills, I thought focused listening would be a great way to start. After discussing nutcrackers and a bit about the storyline, I passed out listening sheets.

The first day we listened to: the Arabian Dance, Chinese Dance and Russian Dance. Students were instructed to answer questions about the tempo of the song, the mood of the song, and other questions that required them to listen carefully to the music. I was surprised how many students said they liked the pieces we listened to!

The second day we listened to: “March,” “Battle Between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” and “the Christmas Tree.” Since many of the students are learning about parts of speech, I provided them with different adjectives to describe the pieces and prompted them to circle the ones that fit.

If you’d like a copy of my Nutcracker Listening Guides so you can use them with your students and clients, click below:

Movement:
There are so many ways to incorporate movement in a Nutcracker-themed session plan. The ballet has pieces of varying tempo and style, each with a different feel to it. I had younger students march to the “March” and move scarves to the “Finale Waltz.” I had older students move the parachute with pre-set choreography to “The Russian Dance.” And completely unprompted, I had many students (male and female!) stand up and pretend to be ballerinas when we listened to the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

These activities were designed to work on gross and fine motor skills and give students to opportunity for creative expression.

Instrument Exploration:
Students and teachers alike were intrigued by the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I showed them the dance on YouTube and they were captivated. Following that, I showed them a picture of a tuba and celesta and took a poll to see how many students could guess the instrument that was playing. Then we watched a video of someone playing the celesta so the students could see exactly what it looked like.

Following that, I created a sheet with the rhythm for Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and each student played it on the triangle along with the song. These activities definitely sustained their attention.

Nutrocker:
Finally, we ended with the “Nutrocker” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra (truly the best way to make the Nutcracker seem “cool” for school-age students). Since one of my main goals for the students is to work on auditory perception skills, I told them that we’d be playing air keyboard and air electric guitar as we listened to the piece. Every time they heard keyboard, they were to pretend to play air keys. Every time they heard electric guitar, they were to pretend to play guitar. Not only did they have to listen to the instrument changes in the song, but they got to rock out and really have fun with it.

I was pleasantly surprised by how many students told me they liked the music of the Nutcracker. It may not be JT or Bruno Mars, but they were open to it, and that is the most important thing!

If you’re looking for even more creative ideas for working with teens, school age clients or adults, I’d love for you to check out the E-Course I created, Tune In To Teens. It’s approved by CBMT for 5 continuing education credits and is packed with creative session ideas and strategies for working with teen clients:

The post How to Make the Nutcracker Cool appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.

Happy Holiday season!

I’m so happy to be writing this post with the lights from our Christmas tree twinkling next to me.

While brainstorming new ideas for my sessions with young children, I came up with this simple little song about Santa.

It’s an echo song and the melody is repetitive, so kids will be able to catch on quickly.

Plus, I’ve also incorporated some movements to go along with each line.

Watch here:

As an added bonus, I’ll be sending out the sheet music to my newsletter list at the end of this week, so be sure you’re subscribed by clicking here.

The post I Am Santa {VIDEO + Free Sheet Music!} appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.

I cannot believe Christmas is right around the corner!

I have to admit I’m pretty excited about that.

This is the first Christmas with our new baby and I’ve been having way too much fun singing carols with her and jingling bells together.

I’ve also been singing carols during my sessions with my clients who celebrate Christmas.

I typically make a very conscious effort to use original songs in my music therapy sessions with kids, but sometimes I do use pre-existing songs when there is a very specific reason.

This year, I thought of a creative way to use the song “Up On the Housetop” to teach the kazoo.

I had been trying to teach my group of 3- and 4-year-olds how to play the kazoo to work on lip closure. It’s actually pretty tricky! They want to blow on it like a whistle, but actually the way to make a sound on a kazoo is to make a “huh” sound that comes from deeper in the throat.

Immediately my mind went to “ho, ho, ho!”

I could prompt them to say “ho, ho, ho” into the kazoo and that would be the perfect way to teach this concept!

So, we sang “Up On the Housetop” and during the part that says “Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go?” I prompted them to “ho, ho, ho” into the kazoo. I repeated it a few times so they had multiple opportunities to make the “ho” sound and play the kazoo, thus facilitating lip closure.

It worked beautifully!

We “ho, ho, ho’d” over and over again.

I hope this little idea will spark some more ideas for you on how to use Christmas songs to target specific goals in your music therapy sessions!

The post Ho-ho-how To Teach the Kazoo at Christmas time appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.