Update on Yesterday's Music Therapy Maker Post...

This is exactly how much I accomplished yesterday on my Music Therapy Maker project...

I looked at the pictures that I have in my clip art collection.

Ugh. It's no wonder I never get anything finished. I have little to no follow through! This is very frustrating for me because I love making things and I get so much joy out of it all, but I just don't do any of it!

Okay, enough of the self-castigation and shame spiral.

Yesterday's book sent out into the world.

So, I had big plans but didn't get anywhere on THOSE plans. I did get some of the little things done that I spoke about. There are lights in my closet now and I started taking things out of the closet and folding clothing into summer and winter clothing. I also finished my laundry, made my bed, took my latest book project to the post office, went to the Dollar Tree and remembered one of the things that I wanted to get there, read a couple of YA books for fun, and watched entirely way too much television. So, things did get done. Just not what I thought I would do yesterday about 23 hours ago. Silly human - plans just don't happen the way you will them to be.

I have made some progress on this project now, though. I have printed off all the house pictures so I can see them. I have ten different houses to use with this notation neighborhood. I have determined that the house on fire will be F, and the gingerbread house will be G. Other than that, I will figure out which house will live in which place in the neighborhood as I go along. For now, I have two of the seven identified which should help as I try to teach this concept to my clients.

You may be wondering why I am trying to figure how to teach this concept to my music therapy clients. I have some students who are interested. I have others who could care less, but I figure that this may be the only opportunity that they have to learn anything about music, so I am going to try to teach as much as I can. Our summer session is a good time to try out new things since it is only 7 weeks long, so I can try some stuff and then refine it again and again. First, though, I need to make my visuals fit in a format for me to use with my clients.

I like making big things and little things to go along. So, I am going to be making some large visuals to use on a large staff and some smaller file folder/worksheets to match the large visuals to make things both group appropriate and small group or individual appropriate.

It is now time to play a bit with ideas. I think I will use "The People in Your Neighborhood," written by Jeff Moss in 1969 as my base concept song. I will piggyback the lyrics to the original music as something like, "Where do the notes live in Notation Neighborhood..." You get the idea. This is something I will have to work out as I go along. I am going to start with G during my teaching process to establish the idea of the treble clef. Then we will expand the neighborhood both up and down the staff. I am not going to worry too much about the concept of lines and spaces - that seems to confuse my clients - so, I am going to just introduce the notes and their locations.

Just had a brainstorm - each one of my music monsters (from the other part of the bigger summer session thing going on in my music therapy room) can inhabit one of the houses! That pulls in another aspect of my session and helps to pull it all together. I need to contemplate that situation a bit now.

Ooh, time for more planning! I am looking forward to making this all work, but I need to think and take notes, so I am going to spend some time doing dishes and cooking to try to get my thoughts in order. I feel like I have made some progress now...