Today I want to write about something that has been a passion of mine for quite some time – giving individuals with autism and related disabilities the opportunity to perform and SHINE.

This is top of mind because I’ve been rehearsing for a holiday program with the preschoolers at Amazing Kids Club, an awesome therapeutic program for individuals with autism.

For their Holiday Show the children will be:

• Playing rainbow colored handbells to the chords of “Jingle Bells” while I sing
• Singing and doing movements to the song “On Christmas Day” about things we see at Christmastime
• Singing and moving to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with verses added for movement (“let’s all do a little clapping / let’s all do a little patting / let’s all do a little stomping.”)
• Dancing with their classmates and family members to “Feliz Navidad”

Over the past 17 years, I’ve assisted children of all abilities to perform in Little Red Riding Hood, The Nutcracker, In the Woods, and several Talent Shows.

Here are some tips I’ve learned about helping children perform and shine, regardless of their perceived disability or level of support needed.

In a class with individuals of differing abilities and levels of functioning:

• Have multiple levels of participation within each song. For example, in “Jingle Bells,” several of the children will be playing the chords on hand bells. The children who need more support will be jingling bells with hand over hand assistance.
• Pair individuals together – Individuals who need less support can assist those needing more support in playing instruments, moving around the stage, and saying their lines.

In a class with individuals who have severe and profound disabilities or are needing maximum support:

• Use communication devices – Clients can welcome the audience, announce song titles, and say parts from a script using their devices
• Use hand over hand assistance – Give clients the opportunity to play instruments by providing hand over hand assistance
• Use auto accompaniment or even (gasp!) recorded music so you can model movements and provide support
• Enlist the help of other support professionals such as OT, PT, ST, and ABA

Why am I so passionate about giving every individual the opportunity to perform and to shine?

Many skills are developed when our clients rehearse for and perform a show.

SO many skills.

Social communication skills, expressive language, motor skills, memory, self-expression, executive function, attention. I could go on and on.

Not to mention the self-esteem that is developed after a successful performance.

I’m also passionate about giving all individuals the opportunity to perform because as a parent myself, I know how incredible it is to see your child up on stage.

You feel pride, you get to take pictures, and you have the chance to encourage, support, and applaud them.

For all these reasons and more, I find a way to have the individuals with whom I work perform for their families and peers often.

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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.

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Friendship Circle is one of my favorite programs to work with. It is an incredible organization that provides services for children and teens with autism, as well as the opportunity for them to make friends and work on social skills in a supportive environment.

I work with Friendship Circle by providing group music therapy services for their Children’s Circle (ages 3-8), Tween Scene (ages 9-12) and Teen Scene (ages 13+).

I LOVE working with these groups because they always keep my on my toes and give me inspiration for continually creating new ideas.

Since I know there are not a lot of resources out there for music therapists working with tweens and teens, I’ve compiled my best ideas into three E-Books (Tuneful Teens 1 & 2 and The Rap Pack for Teens) and a 5-hour CMTE Course called Tune In To Teens.

Be sure to check those resources out if you’re in need of some inspiration when it comes to session planning!

To wrap up the school year, the Friendship Circle groups performed in a Morning of Talent at the beautiful Pinecrest Gardens in Miami.

Here are some pictures from the performances (all shared with parental permission):

Teen Scene did a performance of The Friendship Rap with their own original lyrics:

(PS – Music therapists you can grab the PDF with lyrics and instructions for this intervention plus a free Rap Track MP3 by clicking HERE).

Tween Scene performed “My Body Makes Music” (and these two girls sang like SUPER STARS!!)

Children’s Circle performed “Red is Rojo,” a song to teach the colors in English & Spanish, using multicolored scarves:  

It has been a fantastic year and the Morning of Talent was a great way to bring together everything we’d been working on.

I’m looking forward to starting my seventh year working with the Friendship Circle come this Fall!

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I have to say, that’s one of my favorite modes to be in. In the past, we have prepared many performances that involved singing (watch an adorable video here) and playing instruments. Recently, I have started adding musicals to our program agendas and the children are loving it!

In November 2011, the children wrote their very own musical entitled “In the Woods.” They came up with the storyline, created the characters, and made the background scenery, tickets, and programs!

In December 2012, we prepared a musical based on the popular Christmas story, the Nutcracker. We took the children on a field trip to see the play (they were mesmerized!), then we acted out scenes and dances from the play to create our own musical.

Now, we are working on Little Red Riding Hood, which I adapted into a musical. The performance will be in two weeks, on May 29th and I could not be more excited to see the final result!

The children have been working very hard. Here was our process to prepare this musical:

– I read the children the story “Little Red Riding Hood.” I used a book with beautiful illustrations.

– I held “auditions” for each child to show how they would play the Big Bad Wolf (who can roar the loudest and scariest?) or Little Red Riding Hood (who can skip across the room?)

– I assigned various roles for the musical:

• I assigned one child to each main character role: the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood, the mother, the grandmother, and the woodcutter.
• One class is our orchestra: they play sound effects like the birds singing in the woods (canary stick), the leaves crunching (cabasa), and the wind blowing (chimes). They also play sound effects for each main character (thunder tube for the Big Bad Wolf!)
• Two classes are the leaves and flowers in the forest (they have a special song and dance!)
• One class plays the animals that Little Red Riding Hood sees in the woods.
• One child is the narrator and another is our scene changer by pushing a voice output device that says “Act 1,” “Act 2,” or “Act 3.”

– Practice, practice, practice!

It takes a lot of work to coordinate all the different parts in the musical – the children have lines to learn, positions to learn, and songs to learn. But it will all be worth it when the final show is ready!

Have YOU prepared a musical with the children you work with? I would love to hear what the musical was and how you prepared the children. Leave a comment below to share your ideas!

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Today it’s a rainy morning in Miami. I can’t help but think that if we were up north, that precipitation would be snow!

Luckily my fiancé and I will be spending the holidays visiting family in MD, VA, and WV, so I’m crossing my fingers for a little of the white stuff!

Despite the mild temperatures here in Miami, we had a full blown Holiday Celebration yesterday at UCP’s Early Beginnings Academy (that’s where I work with children birth – age 7 with special needs!)

Part of the holiday spectacular (as I like to call it) was a performance of the Nutcracker, which I adapted into a musical. This was so much fun to prepare!

Here is how we presented this to the children in Kindergarten and 1st grade:

1) First, I brought in a book of the “Nutcracker” and read them the story while the musical soundtrack played in the background. We looked at pictures of all the characters and discussed what was happening in the story.

2) Next, I brought in a real Nutcracker doll so the children could see what it looked like.

3) Then, we took the children to a real, live performance of the Nutcracker ballet (geared specifically towards children). Field trips are always fun, but this one was amazing. The music, the colorful scenery, the dancing, the costumes – the children could not stop talking about what they had experienced.

4) Then, we got to work on rehearsing the musical that I had created specifically for them.

5) Finally, they performed for the families.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Our narrator who struck a triangle to get the crowd’s attention before he announced the Act and Scene number.
• The children learning how to wrap presents for props under the Christmas tree.
• The children learning a choreographed dance to the “Nutcracker March” – complete with marching and spins.
• The children remembering their lines and positions on stage with only minimal prompting – yay!
• Our Clara who danced beautifully with the Nutcracker doll and our live Nutcracker who owned his role by marching, straight faced across the stage.
• The children creating background scenery – this included painting a large window and adding curtains.
• The little girls who danced with tutus to the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” (including another girl from the audience who was taking ballet and decided she wanted to get up on stage and dance, too!)

The children gained a lot from the experience, and we all enjoyed seeing them shine yesterday!

But, that wasn’t all for our Holiday Spectacular!

After the Nutcracker was over, one group of children played “Carol of the Bells” on tone chimes, triangle, and rain stick. One group performed a reggae version of “Little Drummer Boy” on homemade drums. Another group performed instrument solos on xylophone to “Jingle Bell Rock.” We concluded the show by ALL singing festive holiday songs to get in the spirit before Santa made his appearance and handed out gifts.

Days like these make me even MORE grateful than I normally am to work in such an amazing place with children who truly are special.

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Tuesday November 8th was opening day for our Halloween Musical, entitled “In the Woods.”

Many of our parents, grandparents, and family members showed up to support the children (and take lots and lots…and LOTS of pictures). I have never been so proud of my children! They were fabulous!

To catch up, check out The Making of Our Halloween Musical ~ Part 1 and Part 2.

The children did it ALL! They created the story…

They made the programs…

They made background scenery…

They made the tickets…

They made the signs…

And they were the stars…

Here are our instrumentalists…drums for “footsteps walking,” chimes for “wind,” and cabasa/shekere for “leaves rustling”

Here are our trick-or-treaters (and dinosaur)…who remembered all their lines!

Here are the owls standing up to sing and dance for their musical number…

Afterwards, we invited the parents to stay for a short presentation where we shared with them the entire process of making the musical.

Whew! It was a lot of work, but SO worth it once we saw the reactions of the parents in the audience. Now time to start planning for Christmas….

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Our Halloween Musical is well on its way to being ready for opening day!

Although Halloween was officially Monday, our performance date is set for Tuesday November 8th. Between trick-or-treating and our harvest festival at UCP, we had plenty planned for October 31st already!

In The Making of our Halloween Musical ~ Part 1, I shared how the children came up with the story line and how they designed the tickets, programs, and background scenery.

Today, I’m going to share with you some more pictures and some music from the musical. Enjoy!

Making tickets

The children used paint and stamps to decorate tickets. Then we went around to sell tickets to the staff members at UCP. This was great practice for using our communication skills!

We practice…

We practice three times per week for 30 minutes. We want the children to be extremely comfortable with being in the room where we’ll have the show. We also want them to be extremely comfortable with all those lines and songs!

and practice…

and practice!

(I have that silly look on my face because this little guy had just said his lines independently for the first time! Celebration!)

MUSIC

Here are some samples of the music we’ll be using…

As our narrator begins the story, there will be organ music playing to set the spooooky mood (i.e. I set my oh-so-versatile Yamaha keyboard to ‘organ’ under voice settings)

If you read the story line from Part 1 of this series, you also know that our main characters, the trick-or-treaters, run into two groups of animals as they try to find their way out of the woods…owls and spiders. Have a listen to the songs the children will sing as they are met by the trick-or-treaters…

While some of the children are acting and singing, we have one class that is solely dedicated to using instruments to make our sound effects. In the play, our narrator reads the following as a reoccurring line as the children play their instruments….

“The trick-or-treaters walked and walked (children play DRUMS for footsteps). The wind blew (children play WIND CHIMES)….the leaves rustled (CABASA and SHEKERE)…and they heard a sound!”

Meanwhile, I am playing the following on the keyboard to cue the sound effects instrumentalists musically, as well…

 Can you tell which piano phrase is for footsteps? for wind? for leaves?

Stay tuned for the final installment of the series “The Making of Our Halloween Musical.” I will be sure to post pictures of the final product! The children have worked SO hard and I’ll be happy to share their success!

* The organ music, “Spider Song,” and sound effects were composed by me; the “Owl Song” was composed by my wonderful intern, Meaghan.

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The fall holidays are by far my favorite ones to celebrate!

Although it doesn’t always feel like fall in Miami, I still find ways to incorporate harvest and Halloween themes into my sessions at UCP’s Early Beginnings Academy.

This year, I decided to be bold and try something I’ve never tried before…a Halloween Musical! This is a huge endeavor, but with a little delegation and a lot of help from my wonderful intern, Meaghan, I believe it is going to be a success.

This is going to be a multi-part series because I want to take you through the process of creating the musical from start to finish. I believe it is meaningful to have the children be a part of the entire creative process, so I’ll be sharing with you everything they’ve been up to. Here’s what the children have accomplished so far…

Creating the story

The children had already been buzzing about Halloween, so we talked and made a bubble map with ideas for the story line.

Based on the children’s ideas, we came up with the following story line:

One dark Halloween night, four trick-or-treaters get lost in the woods. As they walk to find their way home, they run into different characters and animals. First, they come across a group of owls. The trick-or-treaters ask “Do you know where our home is?”, but the owls don’t know. The trick-or-treaters keep walking and next they come across a group of spiders. They ask “Do you know where our home is?”, but the spiders don’t know. The trick-or-treaters continue to walk and run into….a T-Rex! (I mentioned that the story was written by the children, right?!) The trick-or-treaters are scared, but the dinosaur assures them he is nice. They ask the dinsosaur if he knows where their home is. The dinosaur says no, but that he will help them. So they all continue to walk together until they run into…a monster! But don’t worry…it’s a nice monster! His name is Mimi, he’s black, and has pink and blue hair (ahh, the mind of a preschooler!) The trick-or-treaters ask the monster if he knows where their home is and….he does! He walks with them until they make it safely home. The End!

Costume Ideas

The children looked at books of owls to determine…What color are owls? What do their feathers look like? and How can we create owl costumes?

The children looked at pictures of spiders and a *real* spider to determine…What color are spiders? How many legs do they have? and How can we create spider costumes?

Designing the background scenery

Because the story takes place in the woods, the children looked at books with pictures of different kinds of trees and went outside to look at trees. Then they sketched and colored trees of different colors…

Creating signs to advertise

The children looked at examples of real signs that advertise plays. Then they created their own signs for the play. The children that were able to write were given samples and wrote the title of the play, the date, and the location.

Creating tickets and programs

The children looked at examples of real tickets and programs for plays and then created their own. They sketched and painted pumpkins for the program cover…

In the next post of the series, I will be sure to discuss how the MUSIC fits into all of this and how the play becomes a true musical. Stay tuned because I will be sharing:

* Some songs from the musical
* Ideas for instruments as sound effects
* Piano accompaniment for characters (i.e. monster music!)

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