I can’t believe I’m writing this, but summer is winding down, and the school year is right around the corner.

Today’s post will be the last in my Summer Session Sneak Peek series, where I’ve been giving you a little glimpse into my music therapy sessions with middle and high schoolers with autism and related disabilities.

I’ve found there are not as many resources out there for this age group, so I love to share what’s been working well!

Catch up on the past posts:

Session Sneak Peek #1: Imagine Dragons + The Affirmations Rap

Session Sneak Peek #2: Musical Hangman + Taylor Swift

Session Sneak Peek #3: Pop Singer Movement Combos + Guess Who

Today, our theme is none other than….The Olympics!

We’re celebrating everything related to the Olympics. The sports that are played and the incredible, inspirational athletes that are performing.

Here is how I therapeutically incorporated The Olympics into my music therapy sessions (some of the ideas came from a Facebook thread I read several years ago, so if you created these ideas, please let me know and I’m happy to give credit!):

Opening Ceremony: Ask clients some opening questions about where the Olympics are taking place this year and teach them how to say Hello in the language of that country.

Movement to The Olympics Theme Song: March, move arms up & down and back & forth, and march again to “Olympic Fanfare & Theme” by John Williams.

Summer Olympics Charades: To the tune of “Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis, you and/or clients act out sports from the summer games: swimming, basketball, volleyball, softball, surfing, tennis, and weightlifting. Clients must guess the sport you are acting out.

Musical Olympics: Create musical games for your clients to play, based on their therapeutic goals. Award bronze, silver, and gold medals.

• Rhythms – see who can match rhythm patterns with you most accurately. Rhythm patterns can have an Olympic theme, such as “O-lymp-pics” or “Gold med-al,” or “ice skat-ing.”
• Drumming – drum and count in the language of the country where The Olympics are being held
• Speed drumming – see who can drum the fastest
• Marathon – see who can hold a note the longest
• Pole vault – sing intervals that go higher and higher. See who can go highest!

“We Will Rock You” by Queen: Begin with the pat pat clap movement that goes along with the song; then sing with a pretend microphone; then play air electric guitar.

Olympic Video “Rise Up” by Andra Day + Song Discussion: Watch the video that shows Andra Day singing while inspirational clips from the Olympic games play. After watching, have a discussion about the meaning of the song. Discuss the lyric where she sings “Rise up and do it a thousand times.” Discuss what is means to be a champion – Do champions give up or keep trying? Do they give minimal effort or give their best effort every time? Do they think about themselves or work as part of a team? How can we be champions in our everyday lives?

Dancing: Dance to “I Like to Move it” from the movie Madagascar or “Whoomp! There It Is” from Kidz Bop.

Closing Ceremony: Say goodbye in the language of that country.

I hope this gave you a few creative ideas for your Olympic fans.

If you’d like more creative ideas for your sessions as we round out the summer, check out the Summer Session Planning Pack. The E-Book is packed with creative, summer-themed session ideas for your school-age and teen clients.

Ashley Lewis, MM, MT-BC says “I of course love your resources and I think you are brilliant. Your visuals are the best I’ve ever seen! I’m a huge fan of yours and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next because I will be buying it.”

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This summer, I started a Session Sneak Peek Series, where I give you a sneak peek into some of my sessions with tweens and teens with autism and related disabilities.

I always love to see what other music therapists are up to, and I thought you might too!

Last week, I gave you a peek into a session where I led a movement experience to a popular Imagine Dragons song, did The Affirmations Rap by Snoop Dogg (with some add ons), and led an auditory perception experience with pop music (“Despactio” on marimba anyone?)

This week, we’ll look at how I incorporated Taylor Swift into my sessions…in a therapeutic way, of course.

Music Man (aka Musical Hangman) Game – We played Music Man with Taylor Swift song lyrics. Whichever song the lyric came from, we used in the next experience…

Movement to T. Swift Songs – We then did a movement experience to songs like “Bad Blood” or “You Need to Calm Down” (one of my personal faves, as well as my students’). One movement pattern for the verse and one pattern for the chorus. This allowed the students to work on gross motor skills and alternating attention while they were jamming to T. Swift! It was a win-win.

“Shake It Off” – Then, we played instruments to my live version of “Shake It Off” on uke. Students were given instructions for what to do every time they heard “shake it off.” For example – switch instruments with the person next to you, or stand up and “shake it.” This gave students the opportunity to work on those all important auditory perception and listening skills, as well as selective attention.

T. Swift BINGO – Simply add all your clients’ favorite songs to the BINGO cards. This is another fun way to work on auditory perception and listening skills, as well as selective attention.

I hope this gave you a few creative ideas for your Tay Tay fans. Stay tuned as I share more Session Sneak Peeks this summer!

If you’d like more creative ideas for your sessions this summer, check out the Summer Session Planning Pack. The E-Book is packed with creative, summer-themed session ideas for your school-age and teen clients.

Ashley Lewis, MM, MT-BC says “I of course love your resources and I think you are brilliant. Your visuals are the best I’ve ever seen! I’m a huge fan of yours and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next because I will be buying it.”

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We are more than halfway through summer, which feels unbelievable.

Weren’t we just celebrating the last day of school?!

Recently, I’ve been enjoying Hawaiian/summer/beach-themed sessions with my middle school students and teen clients. I always enjoy a good theme, and this one in particular makes me feel relaxed and happy.

Maybe it’s the colorful lei I’ve been wearing in these sessions, or my increased use of the ukulele, but there is something about a beach-themed session that puts me in a good mood.

Today I want to share with you two summer-y session ideas that have captured the attention of my clients (and even had one student exclaiming “I had a GREAT time!”)

Body Percussion to “Summer Vibes” –
Have you heard this song by Walk Off the Earth? If this doesn’t put you in a beachy mood, I don’t know what will!

This is the perfect summer song, and has been my go-to jam for my sessions with teens.

I’ve been using the Pegato remix for our work on auditory perception skills, and in particular auditory sequencing.

(What does that mean?!)

I created a movement pattern for the verses  (pat / pat / clap) and a movement pattern for the chorus (clap / clap / snap).

I then created a visual to show each of the movement sequences and pulled this up via screen share during my virtual sessions.

Everyone enrolled in Round 2 of the Elevate Email Idea Subscription (the Attention Package) will get the visuals I created for this and several other pop songs that can be used to work on auditory sequencing through movement patterns.

You can enroll here at any time (and earn 7 pre-approved CMTE credits):

Hula Dancing –
After singing a tropical vacation song where we pretend to put sunscreen on various body parts, we are ready to take a trip to Hawaii.

Since I am still 100% virtual, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to do this Hawaiian & Art experience that I’ve done in years past (in person).

Instead, I decided to teach very basic, somewhat modified hula dancing steps:

1. Hands on hips and sway side to side
2. Left arm horizontal across chest, right arm vertical and wave
3. “Hula Hands” – move hands to the side of the body, and move up and down

These two musical experiences proved to be successful in not only offering an engaging experience that my clients were excited to participate in (win!), but one that gave them the chance to work on auditory perception skills (double win!).

Auditory perception skills are critical for success in the classroom and in social situations. When we can work on these skills in a way that’s engaging and fun, we’ve hit the jackpot!

You can get more ideas like this (for school-age and teen clients) straight to your inbox by signing up for Round 2 of the Elevate Email Idea Subscription (the Attention Package):

Bri Walstra, MT-BC had this to say about the Email Idea Subscription:

“I thought the email portion was helpful! I actually really like the creativity worksheets because it forces me to sit down and think about the six ways to adapt one intervention. I think as music therapists we often get so busy and we read about intervention ideas but never figure out how we can implement them best.”

And Michelle Nettle, MT-BC, said this:

“I hope you keep creating more E-Books and CMTE online courses. I love all the ones you currently have available. You are great and your ideas and presentation are so creative and also easy to implement, as you do a great job of “breaking” all the interventions down. Thank you and please keep creating!”

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There is no denying that summer is here in Miami.

Hot temperatures, afternoon rainstorms, staying inside to soak up the AC. Yup, summer is definitely here!

At the Children’s Resources Summer Camp, there’s a different theme for each week of camp. I love this, because it gives me a creative jumping off point for planning therapeutic music experiences. Last year, we did a Musical Game Theme, a Pirate Theme, an Ice Cream Theme and a Camping Theme that was a blast for the students.

This summer, the first theme was Hawaii.

I decided to go all out – I broke out my Hawaiian lei, my sunglasses, and of course my ukulele.

To start off, we sang an Aloha Song with the ukulele, in lieu of our usual Hello Song.

Then, we used the Rainbow Handbells to play the chords for “How Far I’ll Go” while we sang. You can find the complete instructions for facilitation here. This musical experience is a fantastic way to target attention goals.

Following that, I pulled up a YouTube video of traditional Hawaiian music. I found one that also had some pictures of Hawaii rotating through as the music played.

Then, I passed out blank paper, crayons, and colored pencils to each student.

I told the students that as they listened to the traditional Hawaiian music we were going to draw a picture of Hawaii or what we thought was being depicted in the music. For most students, it was more concrete for them to draw what was on the screen and that was just fine! They put their own spin on it, and I loved seeing all the creative touches they added: volcanoes, birds, and tropical flowers.

This activity was a way for the students to be introduced to Hawaiian music while also having the opportunity for express themselves artistically.

All the research I did for this session theme made me want to take a trip to Hawaii. Anyone else feel the same way?

The post Combining Music + Art: A Hawaiian Theme for Elementary Students appeared first on Wholesome Harmonies, LLC.

I’ve recently been beefing up my arsenal of activities for the school-age population (grades K-5).

Two years ago I started working at a school for children with special needs, and it’s been a great exercise in creativity for me!

I have lots of ideas for working with children and teens, but not many that are specifically created for the school-age population.

(There was the Noun Rap, though! Remember that?)

Now that the school is in summer camp mode, we have a different theme each week. This week’s theme is Under the Stars, and the activities are all about camping.

I’ll admit, this one made me a little nostalgic. I was a Girl Scout and I spent many summers at sleep away camp hiking, singing songs around the campfire, and making s’mores.

So, I was more than a little excited to get to work planning camping-themed music therapy activities for my PreK and K-5 students.

Here were some of the hits:

1. Camping Hello Song + Book – To get the activities started in the right direction, we sang a camping hello song. I brought in a book I found at the library called “Down the River” by Andrew Weiner. Instead of using the words in the book as song lyrics, I chose to use the beautiful pictures to show the steps we take to start camping.

To the tune of “Farmer in the Dell” we sang:
A camping we will go, a camping we will go, heigh ho we’re on the go, a camping we will go.
We’re packing up our car, we’re packing up our car, heigh ho we’re on the go, we’re packing up our car.
We’re driving in our car…
We’re pulling on our boots…
We’re fishing in the lake…
We caught a great big fish…
A camping we will go…

For the PreK and K students, we did movements for each verse of the song (for example, pretending to drive a car). For the students in grades 1-5, we did rhythmic body percussion to keep the beat: pat / clap / clap. They got really into it, and it sure was a great exercise in selective attention for them to keep that rhythm up while I sang something different.

Goals – To increase expressive language and to improve selective attention.

2. Roasting Marshmallows and Hot dogs over the Campfire – When I said this idea out loud to my husband, I kind of laughed at myself because it sounded so silly. But let me tell you, this idea was a COMPLETE HIT! I put red, orange and yellow scarves inside a drum…that was our camp fire. Each student got one rhythm stick…that was their roaster.

Then we sang the Campfire Pokey (shared by various library blogs on the web)!

To the tune of “Hokey Pokey” we sang:
You put your marshmallow in, you put your marshmallow out, you put your marshmallow in and you shake it all about. Do the campfire pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about. Yum, yum!
You put your hot dog in, you put your hot dog out…
You put your ___________ (students fill in blank for what they want to roast)

Goals – To improve gross and fine motor skills.

3. Counting Marshmallows – This activity was for the PreK and K students only, since they were working on counting. I laid out ten marshmallows (real ones!) and asked the students one at a time to pick up a roaster (aka rhythm stick) and point to one marshmallow at a time as we counted.

To the tune of “Ten Little Indians” we sang:
1 little, 2 little, 3 little marshmallows,
4 little, 5 little, 6 little marshmallows,
7 little, 8 little, 9 little marshmallows,
10 marshmallows in a row. Yum, yum!

Goals – To improve knowledge of academic concepts (specifically, counting to ten).

We had so much fun during these goal-based activities. I love planning around a theme that brings back so many positive memories!

Next week, we’ll continue on as I share how I use the xylophone and handbells to facilitate singing camp songs. Stay tuned!

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Did you have a chance to try out any of the Moana-themed session ideas I shared in last week’s blog post?

If not, check out the post to see how you can use rainbow bells and the song “How Far I’ll Go” to address attention goals.

As I was brainstorming more ways to use “How Far I’ll Go” therapeutically, I came up with another idea. Since the phrase “how far I’ll go” is repeated throughout the song, why not use that to work on selective attention and auditory perception skills?

Here’s how:

Rhythm Instruments – Group Session

1. Tell students you are going to sing and play “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana. (Hopefully they’ll be as excited as my students were!) Tell them that every time they hear the phrase “how far I’ll go” they are to switch instruments with the person next to them.
2. Sing and play “How Far I’ll Go” emphasizing the phrase “how far I’ll go” and encouraging them to switch.
3. Variation: come up with different directions for them to follow when they hear the phrase “how far I’ll go.” For example – when you hear that phrase, shake your instrument up high! Or, when you hear that phrase, shake your instrument on your head!
4. Individual session variation: This idea could also work with individual clients. Instruct them to switch to a new instrument when they hear the phrase, or any instructions you can think of, as suggested in Step 3.

If you’re looking for more ways to work on auditory perception skills with your clients, watch this video from my blog. You’ll learn how to use musical instruments to work on auditory discrimination and identification (skills that are critical when children are learning to read, write, speak and spell).

If you’re looking for more creative ideas for working with teens, school age clients or adults, I’d love for you to check out the E-Course Tune In To Teens. It’s approved by CBMT for 5 – 15 continuing education credits, depending on the package you choose, and is full of creative session ideas:

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I don’t know about you but I was a little bit relieved when Moana came out and we could finally put the music for Frozen away!

There’s only so many times you can sing “Let it Go” in a lesson or session, am I right?

Because Moana is so popular, I did some brainstorming to come up with ways to use the song “How Far I’ll Go” therapeutically in my sessions. Most of my clients have some sort of attention-based goal as part of their treatment plan, and color coded instruments and notation systems are the perfect way to address those goals.

Here are two creative ideas:

Rainbow Handbells – Group Session
Goal: To improve sustained and selective attention

1. Create color cards that match the rainbow colored handbell set: red (C), orange (D), yellow (E), etc. I used Crayola markers to color index cards. Simple enough!
2. In the session, split your group into four smaller groups. Distribute handbells so the first group is playing a C chord, the second group is playing an F chord, the third group is playing an A minor chord, and the fourth group is playing a G chord.
3. Practice first by holding up the cards for the C chord: red (C) and yellow (E), and cuing clients to play. Then hold up cards for the F chord: green (F) and blue (A), and cue clients to play. Continue until each group has had a chance to practice.
4. Next, sing the chorus of “How Far I’ll Go.” As you sing, cue clients to play by holding up the cards that match their handbell and correspond to the correct chord in the song.

Rainbow Handbells or Resonator Bells – Individual Session
Goal: To improve sustained and selective attention

1. Create a color coded notation sheet with four notes on a staff: C written in red, D written in orange, E written in yellow and G written in green.
2. Instruct the client to play those four notes on their handbells or resonator bells. Cue them to continue playing the four note pattern over and over.
3. Once they are comfortable playing the pattern, begin singing “How Far I’ll Go.” This repeated line corresponds with the chords in the verses and chorus of the song.

Watch out because “How Far I’ll Go” is catchy and a bit of an earworm!

If you’re looking for more creative ideas for working with teens, school age clients or adults, I’d love for you to check out the E-Course Tune In To Teens. It’s approved by CBMT for 5 – 15 continuing education credits, depending on the package you choose, and is full of creative session ideas:

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