Can ANYONE Give Me a Hand?

Is this morbid? I find it FASCINATING!

So, I have some strange things in my house, but nothing more than my fake arm.

It is a strange thing that I picked up at some random Halloween sale (I hope it was at a Halloween sale, but I honestly can't remember - I do know that I bought it, though!). It is amazingly lifelike and a bit creepy as well, but this has inspired a Therapeutic Music Experience (TME).

As you know, if you read my posts on a regular basis, that I work with children and adolescents with developmental and psychiatric disorders. I have some students that will NEVER see the arm. I have a couple of kids who could do with a bit of spookiness and who will LOVE the arm!

Anyway, many of my students have issues with asking for assistance when they need it. Often, not asking for some attention leads to inappropriate behaviors that they could have avoided by asking for some attention.

So, here comes the TME...

I am thinking that the group will be mostly older students with pretty solid academic skills and a bit of an idea of abstract concepts. We will pass the arm around singing something like, "when you need a hand to help you, ask, ask, ask." When we get to the end of the simple song, we will practice the skill of asking for some help - either raising our "hand," or asking for help using our words!

Maybe we could practice "shaking hands." with the arm. We also have a pretty strict "no touching and personal space" rule at work, so we could use the arm for high fives and partner tag as well. Oh, the ideas just keep flowing!

What kind of strange things do you use as props in your sessions? I would love to hear them!