music, therapy, and me

Recently, I have gone into a pattern of not writing ideas or songs down. This is great for my improvisational skills, but it is not great for my therapeutic music experience (TME) compendium. It is time to be a bit more intentional about my composition and TME development. If you have read any of my previous TME Tuesday posts, then you know that I have an organizational system for my ideas. I have a structure that really works well with my brain and my way of doing therapy. This system requires that I think through all sorts of musical and therapeutic elements to coordinate session strategies with specific clients. Now that I do not have clients, I have time to compose and write TMEs down again. My current focus is the two upcoming events through my company, musictherapyworks.com, LLC. One of them is a conference focused on working with adolescents and the other is a creative endeavour that includes making visuals for use in sessions with clients . These are both things that I enjoy c...

I did not post yesterday because I didn't get out of bed until 6:10 (a time when I am usually on the way out of my town towards work). I was in the car and on my way at 6:18, got gas for the car, and STILL made it to work 5 minutes before my official start time!  For the past two days, we have been watching Pixar shorts and have been using different materials to investigate how we play. One pod just doesn't play at all - those are our kids who are more involved developmentally rather than psychologically. They do not know how to play or even explore different situations. We are going to watch Pixar shorts today. It is now 6am, and I am going to work late again. I slept until 5:15 this morning (very irregular). I am wondering why I am not able to sleep recently - I am going to move my vitamin intake to the morning rather than the evening. It may be interfering with my pain medication uptake. That might help with sleeping because this is an entire week where I have not been able ...

It is Friday, again, and I have been to work for an entire week, again. We had a blizzard on Tuesday evening that made for slick roads on Wednesday, but school went on as usual, so I traveled through the ick and the slick in the gusty winds. I didn't get an afternoon off as planned due to the weather on Wednesday, but I did get an extra half hour to plan yesterday before being surprised by an extra client in my last group of the day. Anyway... Today's topic is my collection of collections - some things that give me great joy and that I have incorporated into music therapy at times and that I continue to try to justify (even though justification is not necessary when something gives you joy!). I am a collector of things. It is part of my packrat tendencies and my generational urge to keep things that most people consider to be trash. I have lots of things that fit into different collections. I have my Disney Pop! collection, my mini brands Disney collections, my toy collections,...

As I have been going through boxes and bags of things as a result of my recent water emergency, I have been finding all sorts of things that I have purchased and then packed away. These are things that I had been able to justify purchasing at the time, but that I have not actually used yet. So, as a result, it is time to start working on my Six Things Rule again. Just to refresh your memory (or introduce you to this rule that I have created for myself because I tend to hoard things and keep buying more and more things to use), I have established a "Six Things Rule" to help me figure out if I can purchase things for my music therapy clinic. This rule helps me a bit when it comes to impulse buys, but not much because I can think up six things to do with just about anything when motivated. Right now, though, I need to decide if I can keep these things that are taking over my very being and all my space. These bulletin board pieces, for example. I bought some paw print calendar n...

I have nine days of break ahead of me and a return of my creative sparks happening right now. This is a good thing because I think it means I am starting to feel better. I have some ideas for things to make and release in my TPT store. I also have some supervision things that I need to work up for a fellow music therapist. I actually feel like doing some of these things for the first time in a long time. One of the things that I really enjoy making for my clinical area and for other music therapists is tools. Now, when I use this word to describe what I mean, I have the thought that I want my visual aids to be things that can be used for more than one clinical interaction. I want a collection of pictures to use every time we sing about food. So, a tool for communication will offer as many options as possible for as many songs and opportunities to express our thoughts in as many ways as possible. There should never be a time when you have a visual aid that only works for one song or one...

Oh, goodness. I have remembered to write in the afternoons now two times in a row. My views have gone down significantly, but I think I know ways to get you all to see my posts on various social media accounts... we'll see. Okay. Today is Tuesday (and my brain is working a bit better today than it was yesterday), so that means it is time to talk about therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). So, here we go. This week, the first week in May, is always Star Wars week in my music therapy room. It will always be so - I have decided. We are exploring elements of my favorites stories and some of my toys, and it is music therapy because of the goals behind it all. My groups are getting to spend some time in a galaxy far, far away because I am just a bit of a fan. We have a presentation that introduces some of the music of the series and some of the planets that the creative people behind Star Wars have developed over all these years. We talk about how it would be difficult to take instrument...

I have a rule or system or whatever that I try really hard to live by in my music therapy life. It has to do with what I can keep in my music therapy spaces. I call it my "six things" rule. To keep something in my music therapy storage (which is usually pretty full and somewhat disorganized and ever challenging to me), I have to think of six distinctly different things that I can do with it within a music therapy session. If I cannot find six things, then I cannot waste the space on the item or material or device or whatever. I use this rule when I am creating visuals, when I am shopping and want to get something new, when I am clearing things out of my space. I have been able to put things back that have not sparked these ideas in my brain. So, what does this have to do with TME Tuesday? I printed off a series of leprechaun/March themed visuals that I have posted in my Teachers Pay Teacher store. I spent some time cutting them out, laminating them, and brainstorming about wh...

I've been on a bit of a spending spree lately, buying things like new tote bags and plane tickets and Christmas gifts for family members and a new car and a shirt for me from my favorite blogger's brand-new bookstore and several sets of vinyl beanbags in the shapes of frogs, turtles, and ladybugs! The fruits of my shopping are starting to arrive here at my home, so I am sitting and trying to figure out a couple of things - one, where I will put all this stuff until it goes to its final destination, and two, if there is anything else I need... (P.S. I already know the answer to the second thing on that list, but it doesn't stop me from wondering...) This day is one where I do not have to go to work, so I am taking the day to finish up the pesky chores that have stacked up around here. I cleared out the front hallway yesterday to accommodate the annual changing of the furnace filter, so I have things that need to be pit in their places. I am distressed by the state of m...

I have spent years and years using a couple of sets of vinyl frog beanbags for lots of things - balancing, body part identification, Down By the Banks games, tossing, you name it. Yesterday, though, I came up with a new idea and put it into my TME database. Some background information. Our new school social worker is doing a program using the Zones of Regulation . This program works so well within my current outlook of what music therapy should be for my clients, that I am trying to use it at least once per month. There are four zones - red, green, yellow, and blue. I happen to have frogs in each of these colors (and others besides), so the frogs and the Zones happen to be an easy match. It was easy to take a familiar children's song (which I know as Gunk Gunk, but others know as different songs) and do some lyric alteration to make it fit the Zones. The group that I tried to do this with yesterday was not having ANY of it, but I think I'll be able to get some others engage...

While I've been very tired and dragging along somewhat in the high humidity and time zone lag position that I'm in at the moment, I have managed to come up with some "New To Me" Therapeutic Music Experience (my "NTM" TME ) challenge. Before I left for vacation, I made a coping skills calendar, identifying a specific skill to focus on each month. This month is emotion identification. Next month is Journaling. September is counting, and we're going to count in different languages as well as in our native languages. This is one way that I am going to use themes to organize a portion of my music therapy strategizing in the 2019-2020 academic school year. This week's "NTM" TMEs included a "Play An Emotion" experience and a newly, completely composed song, "If I'm Walking Down the Hall, and My Face Looks Like This." I also took out a song that I haven't sung in years because it was the favorite song of a client o...

As you know, one of my biggest issues with myself is my penchant for stuff - all sorts of stuff. You want a Disney movie to watch? Chances are that I have it on my movie shelves (that's right - shelves). You want a book to read? I have hundreds and hundreds. You need some toilet paper tubes for a craft project? I've got quite a few (I NEVER throw those away - you can do SO much with them - I just heard my mother's voice in my head saying that very phrase...). I like stuff. I am quite sure that I would have ended up as a special educator if I had not heard about music therapy when I was 14 years old. I love going to educational supply stores and browsing through the bulletin board strips and the calendar pieces and the manipulatives and the books and curricula and the tools that teachers use on a regular basis. I love all that stuff, and I have to restrain myself from buying it all! If I had become a special educator, I am sure that I would have almost everything that is...

Monkeys on the Bed and Pet Houses File Folders - in Progress. This has been a creative week for me. I had two new songs develop during the last 10 minutes before a session, and I just finished two new file folders using some templates and some original art. It's time to cut out and adhere Velcro to all the pieces, and then they'll be ready for use in my clinic. I am in the process of making my first file for Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) - it is an original song with a letter sound focus and with original art. I had fun drawing pigs for the file, and it has been a learning experience to make the file and get everything ready for uploading to TPT. I am learning how to use other people's clip art (with full attribution, of course) when I am making my files, but I am also making sure that I am using my own art as much as possible. I enjoy drawing and coloring, especially when I get to share that art with my clients. Not many of them realize that I am the artist when they a...

This is a new, occasional series for this blog - Six Things. You know my rule about having six separate therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for the materials that I keep in my clinic? This is what it looks like for me. I recently purchased four sets of animal Easter eggs at the Dollar Tree. They are cute and small and offer eight different animals to use in music therapy sessions. I thought they were absolutely adorable and well worth the $4 I paid for the 4 bags of eggs. The problem is that I really don't have space to store 40 Easter eggs, even if they are about two inches by one inch each, unless I can justify their use more than once per year. Fortunately, I can come up with lots of things to do with these eggs in order to justify their presence in my music therapy clinic storage space. I just have to write everything down so I'll remember that I have these materials and so I'll use them! I sit down with one of my favorite brainstorming tools - a 4X6 inch index c...

I have a rule for myself - basically, it is a way to keep myself from taking anything and everything that I could ever possibly use into my home and clinic space. The rule is that I must think of six separate things to do with every single material before I will find a place for that thing in my limited storage spaces. Six separate therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for every instrument, prop, visual aid, and other type of material in my music therapy clinic. So, here's where this particular rule for myself comes in handy. Aren't these cute?? I went to the Dollar Tree a couple of days ago. I always wander around the store in a set pattern - up and down the peripheral aisles first and finishing with the center aisles. My first purchase was two sets of animal Easter eggs. They are SO cute, but I knew my rule and so I started thinking. Before I left the store, I had three TME ideas, so I justified spending the four dollars for the 40 animal eggs. After I got home and...