Well, Christmas has passed and the New Year is almost here. To my fellow music therapists out there: Congrats! You’ve almost made it through the holiday season!
The holidays bring so much joy, cheer, excitement, and fun; they always provide for an interesting music-making experience. This is my first holiday season as a music therapist, and I’ve noticed just a few things:
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A month or so ago, Katey and I realized that we were just a little over 100 Facebook fans away from reaching the 5,000 mark. Of course, we couldn’t let that milestone go by without celebrating, and what better way to celebrate than with a BIG giveaway?!
We reached out to Janet Stephens, the creator of Bear Paw Creek movement props, and she very generously offered up a package of our favorite products for our lucky winner. The package includes:
If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, then you know I’m a sucker for a good counting song. But little did I know when I wrote “Little Red Apples” back in August for our early childhood class, it would lead to an entire songbook full of them.
That song was such a hit with our young students AND music therapy clients that we continued writing new counting songs like it every few weeks. We also created visuals for each one, and now have a nature-based counting collection to match every season.
Any music therapist will tell you that it’s really hard to pick favorites when it comes to instruments. After all, they are our tools, and we choose them based on the specific needs and goals of our clients.
That being said, there are definitely certain instruments I tend to gravitate to more often than others. And since I frequently receive emails from students, interns, and new professionals asking which instruments I recommend, I’m sharing them here with you. I left off the very basics (shakers, tambourines, rhythm sticks, jingle bells, etc.) as those are a given.
We bring out castanets quite often in both our classes and music therapy sessions, which means I’m always writing new songs to help target all the goals they can address. This is one such song: it gets those fingers moving, and it also touches on the concepts of high and low.
This song is included in my songbook collection, Ring, Sing, Strum & Drum. The download contains the notated sheet music (as opposed to just the lyrics and chords) along with the full and instrumental recordings.
Members of Listen & Learn Plus! have access to all of the above in our shared Dropbox folder. Membership includes just about everything else in my resource library and collection — come over and join us!
This is the book + course that will help you shape your music therapy career in order to make more money and live your ideal lifestyle. Details here.
