Songbird Studio

My mallet covers tend to slide off, as the thread or rubber banding that holds them on breaks with wear and tear.  So I've discovered a quick trick that fixes the problem easily--tie that sucker on with a zip tie!  When done, I just snip the end, and no more slipping and sliding.  Sometimes I'll cut colorful fabric and take the opportunity to dress up my mallets, too. :)

This back to school get-to-know-you activity is a lot of fun--and tells you a lot more about your students or clients than just their pizza preferences. In this activity, students first fill out a worksheet, answering a handful of questions about themselves, like whether or not they like pizza, what season they were born in, and what some of their hobbies are.  Next, they translate those answers into pizza code--every question they answered is represented in the way they build their pizza and what they put onto it.  Finally, you can display the pizzas, and host a guessing game based on their answers--who can decode the pizzas more quickly?  Even staff get in on this. :)  For all materials, details, and adaptive art suggestions, click here to visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store and get this resource for yourself!

This month in my music groups, we are exploring the element of rhythm.  One of the easiest and most fun ways to do this is by playing in a drum circle.  For my drum circles, we always play through a round or two of my basic commands, which you can see here . A simple exercise we start with early in the month is composing our own rhythm patterns!  We begin with basic choices, such as: |               BEAT—one sound on one beat    (AKA—“ta” or quarter note) | ˉ |          DOU-BLE—two sounds on one beat (AKA—“ti-ti” or beamed eighth notes) Z               (REST)—no sound on one beat    (AKA—“(no sound)” or quarter rest) Each student is asked to choose FOUR of any combination of those options.  They may choose four BEATs, or BEAT BEAT DOUBLE BEAT, or some smart alecks l...

Tomorrow I teach Leisure Skills.  In that class, we work on a lot of different "hobby" areas, finding areas that our kids enjoy, and exploring ways that they can be successful.  For our youngest group, who are around a toddler developmental level, we have four centers.  At the beginning of the school year, we have a rotation schedule, so the kids go to each station and take turns, but as the school year progresses, we begin to let them have free exploration time. We always have four centers, based in the following areas:  building, fine motor, sensory, art, dramatic play, and gross motor.  For example, one month we'll have building with alphabet blocks, a seasonal sensory bin, a collage art area, and mini golf.  Another month, we may  have building with mega bloks, a dress up area, paper dolls, and a cardio drumming area.  We generally always have building and gross motor centers, the rest flux depending on what else we decide to try.  In...

Today we started our drum circle experiences for the year at my school!  First up were my students in our public school day treatment program.  I began by showing a video from Kalani Music , as he demonstrated a Groove Pass technique he uses.  Here it is in case you haven't seen it: Before we watched, I told the students I wanted to know a) what the group was doing, and b) how they were doing it.  As we watched, we discussed how they were passing the groove on to each other in smaller groups--the groove traveled around the circle--some people played while some people did not, and the music never stopped.  Then we discussed how that was happening--they were using their eyes and ears as a player and leader to communicate and know what to do. After the video, I asked the students what body parts they would need today--a lot of them said, "Hands!" to play the drums--but I reminded them I needed them to use their eyes and ears, too, so that they knew when and ...