It's a snow day here in Pennsylvania - a far cry from the 80 degree Januarys we experienced when we lived in Florida! Before I go outside to shovel and sled with my kiddos, I wanted to write up a quick blog to continue the Session Idea Blast Series I started last week. In the [...]
Summer is here! Can’t you just smell the grill and taste the gooey marshmallows? Last weekend, my kiddos and I went away with some friends. We rented a cabin in the mountains, went rail biking, and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the campfire. My mouth is watering just thinking about how good the s'mores [...]
I don't know about you, but I love to take a peek at what other music therapists are doing, especially if they work with a similar population as I do (middle and high schoolers with autism and related disabilities). It helps give me some fresh ideas, which are sometimes needed after nearly TWENTY YEARS in [...]
I used to start all my music therapy sessions with teens the same way I would start my sessions with kids - a Hello song. I cringe now because for many of the teen clients I worked with, I think this made them feel like a child. This was definitely not my intent. My intent [...]
Have you been keeping up with the Pop Song Spotlight posts? The past two blogs have been about the best songs for working on attention skills with instruments (Imagine Dragons and OneRepublic are part of this spotlight) and the best songs for movement (a few are perfect for the upcoming summer months). Today, I'm spotlight-ing [...]
A few days ago, I don’t remember how it happened, but it came across my radar that Snoop Dogg has a kid’s album. Yep, you read that right. I wasted zero time in YouTubing this so I could hear exactly what the album was all about. Much to my surprise, the album is not only [...]
In music therapy, the music is what we use to captivate and engage our clients so they can work on attention goals, social goals, communication goals, or whatever the goal areas might be. But as music therapists, we have to find and use the music that our clients actually like. That music might be Drake, [...]
Last week I shared a new song, "Let's Stay In The Green Zone," that I had written for a student who receives consult music therapy services. Today, I want to share a second song I wrote, called "Today I Will," to help this student stay in the Green Zone of Regulation (meaning they are calm, [...]
Recently, I moved from Miami up north and started working virtually at a school in Maryland. I provide group, individual, and consult music therapy services for their middle and high school students with autism and related disabilities (which I absolutely love doing). During the consult for one student who has music therapy on their IEP, the [...]
When it comes to creating musical experiences for my school age clients, here's how it typically goes: As soon as I know the goal I'm targeting (typically a goal in the attention and perception realm, since those skills translate directly into having success in the classroom and a work environment), my immediate next step is [...]
