Six Things: Animal Easter Eggs

This is a new, occasional series for this blog - Six Things. You know my rule about having six separate therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for the materials that I keep in my clinic? This is what it looks like for me.

I recently purchased four sets of animal Easter eggs at the Dollar Tree. They are cute and small and offer eight different animals to use in music therapy sessions. I thought they were absolutely adorable and well worth the $4 I paid for the 4 bags of eggs.

The problem is that I really don't have space to store 40 Easter eggs, even if they are about two inches by one inch each, unless I can justify their use more than once per year. Fortunately, I can come up with lots of things to do with these eggs in order to justify their presence in my music therapy clinic storage space. I just have to write everything down so I'll remember that I have these materials and so I'll use them!

I sit down with one of my favorite brainstorming tools - a 4X6 inch index card! As you can see in the picture, I start with a heading and a date. The heading is a brief description of the material itself - in this case, "Animals - Easter Eggs." Then I write a brief description including an inventory of what I have. After that, it is time to brainstorm! I go through my existing TME database to find TMEs that I already have developed where these materials will work - Easter Egg Hunt, Hot and Cold game, Find the Match, Walk Like an Animal, Going to the Zoo, Audio Discrimination, Animal Sound Recognition/Production, Animal Identification. If I have specific TMEs already coordinated, they go on the list. If I have an idea for a song to go along with one of these goal areas (like audio discrimination, animal sound recognition/production. etc.) it goes on my TME list in the folder, Ideas for Development.

This card gets duplicated - one card for my index card file, one card for the storage area. I also put this into my TME database so I can find these ideas in several different ways. If I type in "audio discrimination" into my search function, TMEs and materials show up. It is a good system for me - cross-referencing is important so I keep remembering what I have and what I haven't used in some time. 

If you are looking at the actual card, you may have noticed one of my best tools for myself - COLOR CODING! It sounds silly, but color coding my ideas, my TMEs, my file folders, and all that saves me SO much time when I am strategizing my sessions. In my brainstorming process, I identified uses for these animal Easter eggs in five treatment domains - motor, musical, academic/cognitive, social/communication, and emotional/behavioral. I can see all sorts of uses in treatment for these eggs, just by looking at the card! I have an entire session's worth of planning centered just around this bag of materials. I could fill an entire session using only these animal Easter eggs.

Here are the TMEs that I am developing for these particular Easter eggs. If you are interested in more information and/or the TMEs, please contact me through the website.  

Here's the list:

• Easter egg hunt - hiding the eggs around the music therapy room for clients to find.
• Find the Match hunt - hide half the eggs and send clients to find specific eggs.
• Audio discrimination - make sound pairs with various materials. Challenge clients to find the matching pairs by listening to the sound each egg makes. Novice level: Match sounds with egg exteriors - koala=koala. Advanced level: Make pairs that do not have the same exteriors - koala=lynx. 
• Animal identification - Receptive and expressive language goal. Can you find the giraffe? Can you find an animal that is a herbivore? Can you find an animal that lives in the desert?
• Walk Like an Animal - This is a song and an TME that I wrote a long time ago that encourages motor planning and creative movement.
• Animal sound recognition and production - expressive language goal - What makes this sound? Encouraging sound production - use in communication games.
• Going to the Zoo - choosing animals for this common TME.
• Zoo Map - Planning a trip around our local zoo with accompanying song - executive function and cognition.
• Animal emotions - assigning an emotion to each animal and then using the animals to express our own emotions.
• Hot and Cold - Using animal sounds to isolate specific animal Easter eggs in the therapy space. As the searcher comes closer, the sounds become louder and stronger.

More than six things for these materials, and I love it! I can justify the need for a bag and some space for these Easter eggs even after Easter is over next week! Hooray!

Again, if you would like to know more about the therapeutic music experiences that go along with these thoughts, please contact me through the website!