Movie Week in Music Therapy

I asked my older adolescents to plan their music therapy sessions for this summer session. They all wanted to watch a movie, so I combined the scavenger hunt from last week to assist them in selecting a movie to watch for the next two weeks.

I usually use movies as a last resort. There are short movies included in my sub plans for when I am away from the music therapy setting, but I rarely watch movies with my clients. I try to have a screen-free environment in music therapy, mainly because my clients spend lots of other time watching the Smart Boards, using iPads, or watching television. This week of movie-watching is something I don't usually do, but I am ready for this.

So, how to incorporate movies into music therapy? I am a movie nut - I have hundreds of movies here at home, so I started strolling around my movie library. My criteria for movie selection? PG or G movies only - all others are not allowed in our school. I also wanted movies that my students were less likely to have seen, so Frozen, Tangled, and other recent movies were out. So, I trolled around the shelves, pulling off movies like Newsies, Fantasia 2000, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Hercules, the Muppet Movie (1979), Sound of Music, and Schoolhouse Rock Earth. I printed off pictures of the movie covers, cut them into pieces, and then used them in the Scavenger Hunt last week. Each group chose what they wanted to watch - first and second choices.

Almost every group chose Hercules for their first choice, but the second choices varied...

Now, we are not going to simply watch movies, nosiree! We're also going to do word searches, songwriting substitutions, and coloring sheets. I've got some things to prepare this morning, that's for sure.

We're also going to spend some time talking about the themes of the movies that we selected. Hercules is an interesting story, but it has been Disneyfied for this movie. When you start to look for resources to help you make theme ideas, you can find all kinds of things. Use the Google Machine. I typed in "Themes present in Hercules Disney" and found wikipedia information, a Master's Thesis, and an entire packet of Hercules study stuff. So, we're going to have lots of things available to do while watching...

So, off to do a week of movie watching with some of my clients. Now, I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of them... 

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