Hello, Hello, Hello to You!

Hi, everyone, another quick video sharing my current hello song and some tips for guitar use with students and clients with fine motor difficulties. Plus, I talk about how I use my hello song as an environmental cue, to build rapport, and to increase conversational greeting skills. Enjoy! I'll be back later this week with a whole new use for it!

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Effective Behavior Management

Building Rapport One Step at a Time Last month, I did a short presentation at my former graduate school for the student music therapy association there. One of the programs I work in is a public school day treatment setting with adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders, and the organizer of the event felt that presenting on behavior management strategies would be most informative for the group. I thought I would share parts of my presentation here, as a new series on the blog. If you're anything like me when I was going through my music therapy practica, this is the population that produces the most anxiety for you. Hopefully these practical, concrete tips will ease some of that anxiety, because I feel this is a very fulfilling pouplation to work with, and I hope you get the opportunity to do so someday. It's also possible that you are very comfortable with or excited about working with this population. If that is the case, I hope this series reaff...

PDF for Shake them 'Simmons Down

You can view the song from this blog post and find the file available for download here ! I've notated the song in the key of C--transpose to whatever key best fits your needs. I also notated V chords as straight Vs, but you are of course free to spice them up as V7s, or get more inventive with the chord progression as a whole--whatever best fits your population!

Emergency Calming Session

My littlest kiddos came in after a rambunctious round of PE outside that had been punctuated by a lot of larger students also outside--who were out of control and interfering with their group. As a result, my littles were escalated and upset and out of sorts when they came to me. So my emergency calming protocol kicked in. Every class includes our hello song, a movement activity, an instrumental play activity, and a boo k , capped by a goodbye song. Today we still included all those components, but changed them up a little. First we dimmed the lights. I have 3 rows of lights, and I turned off 2. Next, I began fingerpicking on guitar, using the chords for our hello song. Once everyone was seated and settled, we began our hello song intervention, but I shortened our greeting practice, decreasing demands but increasing support in order to improve emotional regulation. We did some gentle movement imitation, using scarves to this relaxing AniMusic video ....

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