It's the End of the Week...Happy Thought!

It is the end of my therapy week. I only have large group treatment on four days of the work week, so my Fridays are reserved for planning and preparation and a few individual and/or push-in sessions. This is because we move from a five day workweek during the school year to a four day workweek during the extended school year/summer sessions. It is too difficult to compress a five day group schedule into four days, so we just establish a four day group schedule and reserve Fridays for the required planning time that we are entitled to under our Master Contracts. It's complicated, but it works for us and that's what matters.

ANYWAY...

This week was not as full of creative ideas as I would have liked, but my students didn't really seem to miss the creativity. I have lots of ideas to develop, but it will take me some dedicated time to get the visual aids and the games together, so I'm not stressing about having everything absolutely perfect.

What did we do this week?

This week was Instrument Family week. We talked about the different instrument families and how I categorize them (by how the instruments are played - hit/shaken, strummed/plucked, blown, and buzzed). I demonstrated one instrument from each family, and then we played Music Instrument J-I-N-G-O (Google it, it's a pretty good game for music educators. I use it occasionally in the music therapy clinic as well). That was the focus for the first half of the week. The second half of the week included emotion recognition practice and familiar singing TMEs. We also played some instruments.

I am behind on my documentation (didn't finish Wednesday morning notes and I have all of Thursday to do), so my first priority for this planning day is to get those notes finished. After that, I'll spend some time embedded in one of the classrooms to work on relationship building with those clients, and then I have peer supervision off-site. The afternoon will be spent practicing my Luke Bryan song and making my visual aids for the Musician of the Month reveal next week.

I've started my session strategizing for the next several weeks as well. 

I am liking my session strategy process these days. One of the things that I have found is that I am not using my personal bullet journal because I have everything in my work journal. I'm not sure that I need the personal journal anymore, so I'll morph that small book into something else. Maybe I'll draw in it or write poetry again (it's been such a long time since I've written poetry). 

Tomorrow is my day off. I'll spend some time with a friend and then talk to my family members several times during the day. I would like to finish some course content and make something just for me or for a family gift. I have a pattern for a crocheted market bag that is currently challenging me. I will also watch lots of super hero television and silly movies. On Sunday, I'll go to work, do some grocery shopping, and cook something to eat for the week.

It is almost the end of my week. I am ready.

Happy Friday.