Ramblings - Things that are Helping Me Center Myself Today

I've got nothing interesting to talk about today, so I am just going to ramble until I feel like I am finished. Sorry for the rambling nature of what is going to happen, but this is the way it will be today...

I want to finish my center signs for the music therapy room today. I am running out of menu laminating pouches, but I have enough for the projects that are stacking up. It is time to re-order pouches, so that's on the to-do list for today.

I tried something new this week with my clients. I used a chip/dip tray to sort note cards (I got the idea from Mrs. King's Music Class - check out her blog for lots of interesting music education workstation ideas). I organized my trays so that I had two different notes on the chip part of the trays. I also organized the trays so that there are Velcro pieces on the edge of each of the chip parts. I only covered two of the six Velcro pieces. Here's what I found about using chip/dip trays with my clients in the music therapy session:

1. My students don't like empty Velcro. Almost every single person started by putting the sorting cards onto the empty Velcro dots. From now on, I'll cover all the Velcro pieces with sorting cards rather than leaving them empty.
2. Sorting is easy, except when it isn't. I was surprised at the students who could complete the task and the students who couldn't.
3. I'll use this center again. It kept students somewhat busy. I do need some additional things to do with these trays to engage all of my clients (up and down the cognitive spectrum), but I am getting those things started and am using things I already have in this center so I don't have to have tons of new supplies to store.

We did some new things this week. We spent some time making rhythm wheels using my big note pieces (that's not new, but it was new to many of my students). We made sandpaper music note rubbings (I need to take some pictures of that - it was very neat!). We improvised songs about rhythm. We danced to unfamiliar songs. We danced to familiar songs. We sorted notes by attributes into two piles - quarter and paired eighth notes. We read our rhythm wheels. One group was even able to keep three distinct patterns going simultaneously (they were the only group who was able to do that, yay them!!)

I used my bullet journal/session planning set-up lots this week. I've already started strategizing for the next several weeks. Part of my planner includes a place for future planning. I put that on Fridays since most of my Fridays are planning/preparation time. I have to choose a song by my Musician of the Month - we are going to do a lyric scramble and a songwriting TME, but I have to learn the song by the musician first. I want to solidify my concepts for stations during the week for the different groups that I will see.


Next week, our central concept is instrument families. I'm going to break out my posters and make some folders about each of the families. We are going to explore different instruments - something from each family. We are going to play a new game - Name That Note - and an old game, J-I-N-G-O. That's what is on the strategy, at least. I am sure that the sessions will not go as planned - that's the only definite thing that I can count on.

Time to find a new song to learn.

(Well, for a blog post that took me a staggering 2 hours to write, this actually turned out to be a post more about music therapy than I thought when I started.)

Happy Saturday!