Music Therapy Maker: New Things to Put in My October Box

On Friday, before I went a-craftin', I went to some thrift stores to see if I could find an interview skirt and then to the Dollar Tree to roam. I try to get to the Dollar Tree once or twice a month to see what they have that can supplement my music therapy experience design. This month was fruitful for Halloween-themed things.

Now, if you know me, you know that I do not celebrate Halloween much. I tend to downplay holidays in my therapeutic interactions with clients because (my former) clients tend to get too involved with holiday excitement and seem to think that it is an excuse not to work on therapeutic goals. This is too bad because there are SO many cool things to shape therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for this season.

Friday's trip was no exception.

I left there with all sorts of things, placemats, stickers, playing and educational cards, Mad-Libs, and Halloween Movie Night Kits which go along with my most recent sing about edition: sing about the movies. Of course, I published this edition before I went to the store, so I cannot incorporate the things in the kit with the edition, but that's fine because what I find at my Dollar Tree may not be found at your Dollar Tree.

Inside my kit there are four movie night invitation tickets (cute idea, but four is not enough for the kinds of groups that I usually do, so I may make my own), four Movie Bingo cards, BINGO card markers, three decoration die cuts, and four movie ranking sheets of paper. My immediate thoughts about how I could use this kit in music therapy sessions include Movie Bingo - finding songs that incorporate the different Halloween pictures on the cards, singing about Halloween movies to use up the rankings, and finding matches in the die cuts. My main problem with this kit is that there aren't enough of anything and buying duplicates means that there are duplicates. As a result, I want to design some things that are similar but specifically intended for use with TMEs for specific populations.

The Halloween stickers that I purchased are great, but I will need to go back and get copies if I want to use them for either board games or matching cards. That's not a problem - there is more time before the holiday so there will be extras nearby, but I might also want to use them for other purposes. 

The indecision is what keeps me from finishing projects.

I found some cards as well. Cards are some of my favorite manipulatives for music therapy sessions because they are versatile. I found some Fisher-Price compare and contrast cards, some Fisher-Price colors and shapes cards, and a pack of Jurassic World matching flashcards. I also found some dinosaur file folders, so I am going to make some dinosaur theme boxes for some lucky people to add to their music therapy theme possibilities.

I am making plans to be an exhibitor at two regional conferences this year - the Southwestern and Midwestern regions. I hope to have some boxes similar to the dinosaur one that I mentioned above, lots of craft things (books, bookmarks, cards, stickers), file folder activities, and copies of all of my sing about editions. I will include paper copies and digital copies for participants to purchase, so I am making all sorts of plans.

(The last time I made these types of plans, the world shut down for COVID-19, so I am a bit apprehensive.)

This is the next step for what I want to do with my business - making and selling materials to other music therapists. My primary hesitation in all of this is the way things happened before - the end of the outside world as we knew it for several years. This time around, we are more prepared, but still...

Let's hope this doesn't happen again.

Off to make some dinosaur boxes and finding all the things that I want to have for my exhibition table. See you soon.