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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Northern Lights Adaptive Art Part Two!

Our next step for our Northern Lights project was to create the trees, putting our cutting skills to the test. Depending on the student's abilities and the time available, I either had the triangles for the trees already cut out, or asked the student to cut the triangles. We then folded the triangles in half, and practiced cutting on a line and stopping before the edge. All of my students required the lines to be drawn in order for them to understand where and how to cut the trees. About 2/3 of my students were able to cut on the black Sharpie line and stop when the line disappeared. However, about 1/3 required an extra little visual prompt to stop at the end of the line before cutting all the way through the tree. I just added a small cross mark and used verbal or physical prompts as necessary to further delineate the end of the line. (By the way, these are some of the adaptive scissors we used. My green push scissors are frequently used, ...

Everyday Advocacy

Or, Top Ten Ways to be an Effective Music Therapy Advocate in the Workplace... But can I confess? I think these would work in any profession! 1) Be professional. Be on time, with an appropriate appearance and demeanor for the facility you are working in. Follow facility guidelines for charting, communication, scheduling, etc. Be friendly with everyone on the staff--no one is beneath you, and everyone can help you! 2) Know when to talk. Be open to teachable moments--those random hallway conversations or tangents during meetings where you can pipe in knowledgeably with a little nugget of music therapy gold. 3) Know when to zip it. Don't be preachy. Of course you're excited about music therapy and its benefits, why else would you be doing the job? But sometimes it is best to let your work speak for itself. People will notice positive results, but if you are constantly achatter or seen as exaggerating, you may drown yourself out. 4) Actively seek ways to add value ...

Book Review: Grateful Giraffe, a Yoga Story

I recently had the opportunity to review The Grateful Giraffe, by Giselle Shardlow. It is a sweet book featuring a variety of animals corresponding to yoga poses for children. I read the book and did the yoga flow with my kids one morning, and they really enjoyed it! Giselle has included tips for how to use the book and how to use yoga in general with kids, and I loved that! There are illustrations of kids performing the poses on each spread, which is very helpful for young ones who need information in as concrete a manner as possible. I also really enjoyed the flow--it was one that I could probably teach to my kids to use without the book eventually. We added a simple mindfulness component to the rest pose at the end. As we lay in rest pose, we talked about five things we could see, five things we could touch or feel, and five things we could hear. It was a nice way to bring closure to the activity and add in mindfulness. There is an extr...

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