Musical Scarf Activity

I’m back again today to share a song that I wrote to use with my youngest children in music therapy. I like to stick with a general theme each month, so October focuses mainly on fall and Halloween-related topics. This particular song accompanies a scarf activity, in which the child is asked to listen for the color of his/her scarf and then wave it in the air. The scarves I use are from West Music and can be found here.

There are twelve different colors, and the kids absolutely adore them and are always coming up with new ways to use them. So I wasn’t completely surprised when a couple of kids draped their scarves over their heads and began floating around even before I started playing this song:

Not all ghosts are scary,
And not all ghosts are white.
Listen for the color I choose
And let your ghost take flight!

If your friendly ghost is red,
Wave him in the air.
Wave him right and wave him left,
Wave him everywhere!

Not all ghosts are scary,
And not all ghosts are white.
Listen for the color I choose
And let your ghost take flight!

I change the color of the ghost each time I sing the verse so that every child has a turn. Not only is this a super-fun activity, but my kids are working on color discrimination, listening skills, and turn-taking at the same time. It’s a beautiful thing!

iPod Bingo

I use my iPod at work on a daily basis. I just plug it into my handy dandy speaker, and then I have my entire library of tunes at my fingertips. Most of the time, I use the iPod to play songs to accompany instrument or movement activities – circumstances where playing my guitar is not convenient or possible.

But last year while I was brainstorming ideas for one of my higher functioning classes, I came up with a great new (at least, for me) way to utilize the iPod. My students love current songs, movies, and listening to the iPod, so why not combine all three into a game of Bingo? I set to work creating snippets of songs (about 20 seconds each), both from movies and artists I know my students like, using the Mac music-editing program Garageband. Then I created Bingo sheets, twelve for each version of the game. They turned out like this:

I bought those little plastic googly eyes to use as bingo chips, which I store in mini plastic ziploc bags (one for each student). And then I created a playlist of the song snippets, which I just set to shuffle and then hit play. Then I can assist the students instead of dealing with the iPod, which just plays on its own.

iPod Bingo has become the students’ favorite activity, and I use it as a reward for completing other music therapy tasks that aren’t quite as exciting. While they think it is just a fun game, it actually fosters critical listening, social interaction, and team work. Over the next month I’ll be putting together iPod Bingo: Holiday Edition.