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Fun Friday: Halloween - Ugh!

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There are two good things about this Halloween - first, it falls on a Friday which means that I will be at home when my clients wake up from a fun-over. I do not have to wrangle them into post-holiday music therapy sessions after a break in their schedules. The second thing is that I live in a part of town that does not have many kids, so I do not have to buy any candy to hand out. In fact, my lights will be turned off this evening. I am not a fan of this holiday, so I am thankful it is almost over. My Halloween sessions have gone over with a resounding sigh this week. No one has been really interested except for the last two groups which means that I finally got into my groove during the last two groups. I have ideas for how to make my Halloween carols a bit more interactive for those with limited communication opportunities, and I will put them into place to release on TPT before Halloween next year. I love it when ideas pop into my head this way! I do not have a costume. I think I w...
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Thoughtful Thursday: Looking for Meaning

I am getting ready for the Music for Kiddos Symposium which will be happening eight days from now. I signed up as soon as I could to save a bit of money, and this will be most of my professional development for this year. I have never attended one of these before, so I am interested to see who is presenting and what they are presenting about. A friend of mine is also attending - I don't know if she will be able to do the live presentation or not, but we will be watching the same things eventually. That's kinda cool. I am experiencing lots of "lasts" these days. I am getting ready to retire from my job as the staff music therapist after almost 30 years of working in a job that I thought I would have for, at the most, 5 years. Surprise! As I am gearing up for my last Halloween parade, I am in a nostalgic mood - very much affected by the massive headache caused by skeletal misalignment. My spine is giving me fits again, so I am hurting up and down. That's neither he...
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Wednesday

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Well, it is Wednesday. This day used to be the exact center of my week. I had as many sessions ahead as I did behind me when I reached Wednesday, but that is not the way things are now. Now, Wednesday means that I have finished 10 sessions and have 11 sessions ahead of me. It is almost the middle of my therapy week, but not quite. I have five sessions on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I have four sessions on Thursdays, and two sessions on Fridays. It's not a perfect schedule for me, but it is what I have to work with, so I do it. This schedule is much better than the one where session times were staggered throughout the day - that one just scrambled my brain for the year we had to do it. No session ended on the hour or the half hour. They do now because it was just too confusing to do a staggered schedule. There are some things that we do for the benefit of ourselves, and getting the schedule back onto a system of switching on the hour and the half hour was for the staff rather...
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TME Tuesday: Things Do Not Need to Be Complicated

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Every so often, I am reminded that simple is often better than elaborate. Sure, visual aids are wonderful for reinforcing concepts and assisting with comprehension, but my feeling is that any therapeutic music experience has to be able to work without those aids. Visuals are to enhance the music, not take over for it. If the music doesn't work without the visual aid, then the music becomes the secondary therapeutic medium - an enhancement, if you will. This week, we are listening to the music of performers born in this month. We have been also playing instruments. I have been selecting the instruments this week rather than letting my clients pull whatever they want from the cabinets, and I've picked some strange ones as well as some really cool instruments that are often overlooked. After a very short demonstration for the unfamiliar instruments, we go into selecting songs and playing instruments. I do not use any visual aids in this part of our interaction, but the next part, ...
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Make It Monday: Working On Things

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I am currently trying to figure out how to release a free file to all of you, but I am getting bogged down in the details of how to get this going. I have the file ready, but I am unsure how to get you to that file. I can do it through a quick website update, but I need some time to do that website update. This is causing me to change some plans, but that is fine. Anyway, is anyone up for a November freebie? I am going to release information about a free resource this week. I am. I just need to get things organized on my side of things. In the meantime, I am getting ready for (ugh) Spirit Week and Halloween at work. I am going to share my Halloween resources with groups this week after we talk about our October Musicians of the Month. I have books, carols, games, and all sorts of Halloween-ish stuff. I am working on the pattern for a Halloween lapbook, but that will probably not be ready to share by Friday. It is spurring my creativity, though. I love lapbooks, but I haven't produc...
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Sunday Song:

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I am sitting on my sofa in my front room, waiting for the rain to arrive, and eating noodles. I am blogging a bit later than usual because it is Sunday, and I don't have anything to do.  Well, as always, that isn't true, but I have no outside obligations which is very nice. I could go to see Tron, but I am not all that interested in leaving my house. It was another long night - something is going on with my sleeping patterns, but I am not stressing about it. This all brings me to this Sunday's song. As I write these posts, I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out what to write about. It varies from day to day and mood to mood. I spend time brainstorming and trying to figure things out, but I never know if anyone else even cares about what I write. This always brings me back to the songs that I keep just for me. The one that I will always keep for my own benefit and use without sharing it with clients is Dar Williams' What Do You Hear in These Sounds?  I love thi...
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Thursday Was a Mess. Will Friday Be Any Better?

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I did not post yesterday because I didn't get out of bed until 6:10 (a time when I am usually on the way out of my town towards work). I was in the car and on my way at 6:18, got gas for the car, and STILL made it to work 5 minutes before my official start time!  For the past two days, we have been watching Pixar shorts and have been using different materials to investigate how we play. One pod just doesn't play at all - those are our kids who are more involved developmentally rather than psychologically. They do not know how to play or even explore different situations. We are going to watch Pixar shorts today. It is now 6am, and I am going to work late again. I slept until 5:15 this morning (very irregular). I am wondering why I am not able to sleep recently - I am going to move my vitamin intake to the morning rather than the evening. It may be interfering with my pain medication uptake. That might help with sleeping because this is an entire week where I have not been able ...
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