music, therapy, and me

Do you know that I write a monthly therapeutic music experience (TME) collection that is available to you? I do. It's a labor of love that I enjoy so much, and I just finished this year's sing about october and will be releasing it to subscribers Thursday morning! When I was a naive Master's student many years ago, I wanted to do a project thesis where I was writing curriculum for musical learners. This curriculum was based on teaching specific facts and skills to learners who might appreciate hearing the information in a musical format. I had written much of the music and most of the background information when my advisor changed and the new one was not at all interested in what I had developed. So, I shoved my sing about songs project to the back of the shelf and finished a thesis that my advisor would approve. That project, however, still called to me. After I finally left school (a humbler and much wiser music therapist and person), I pulled it out of the back of the ...

My June box is a bit more full now than it was yesterday when I opened it up. Yesterday, the box revealed that I hadn't really put much into this particular box, so it was time to figure out some things to place into it. I started by printing off my sing about june editions for 2020 and 2021. These books contain several unique Therapeutic Music Experience (TME) plans and some visual aid options. Now I have lots more information available to me for strategizing purposes. I then finished up and printed off a summer music rhythm post that needs to be laminated and cut out to be complete. You can see some of the icons and one of the rhythms ready for the laminator. That is my job for today - laminating everything that I want to use this month. There is a bunch that is not included in this post because their permanent homes are not in the June box (yet), but this file is part of the laminating stack.  One of my TMEs in June 2020 is Bowling for Boomwhackers. This chance composition, let...

It is Sunday, so it is time for me to unpack a routine, a procedure, or "the way I do things" into a bit more detail and try to find some sort of justification for why I do what I do the way that I do... Today, I am going to unpack the way that I organize things using color. I color-code lots of materials and ideas in my environment. I find that I respond more quickly to materials when I can easily identify their purpose quickly, so color lends itself to quick recognition for both me and most of my clients. The only clients who have difficulty with this type of system are those with various forms of color-blindness, and I have materials that they can access as well. I really do use color as a shortcut, and most of the ways that I use these colors are completely personal and are a trick for me rather than for anyone else. The first way to use color is to help organize multiple sets of identical visual aids. This is where the color blind consideration comes into play. I...