music, therapy, and me

You know how I had no idea what I would do with my 30 minute groups on Wednesday? Well, I came up with something that seemed pretty successful - always a good situation to find yourself in! I sat in my office space and just thought and thought. I had a stack of books that I had to put away, and I decided that a singable book might be a good way to get music going in a very hot environment. So, I went through the stack of books and found one that I could expand upon. I selected Groovy Joe: Ice Cream and Dinosaurs  as my book for the week. It is not a song book (as far as I know), but there is a song affiliated with the book (I did not download it), so it lent itself well to an improvised song/chant with a background beat. I kept up the dinosaur theme and showed my clients a magnetic play set of dinosaurs that I purchased from the Dollar Tree store many years ago. I sang/asked them to choose their favorite from the pictures. Most of them selected brachiosaurus as their favorite. Mine...

I was unable to resist the itch yesterday and left around 6:15am instead of waiting until 6:30. Today, I didn't even open my eyes until 25 minutes after my alarm light turned on (I use a light instead of an audible alarm because I get startled by sounds in not good ways to start your day...). I took my shower, and then started my morning routine. It is now 5:30am. I will try my best to stay where I am until it is 6:30, but the itch is happening... Anyway, let's make this more about music therapy than about my current anxious itch. I am in the midst of developing my October theme digital offering for my clients. I will be taking a couple of days off for the AMTA National Conference (offered virtually) in October, so I want to have a file ready for those two days. The theme is Bullying, and I started off by finding some YouTube resources for my clients to access. I have a couple of original songs that need to be recorded, but I do not have a moment to myself these days, so I am r...

I have decided that it may be best to make my "What I'm Reading" posts every other week instead of every week since I can't seem to bring myself to read every week these days. So, here is a "Not What I'm Reading" type post that still has something to do with music therapy. My current intern is very good at taking music and adapting it to what she needs in the moment. She has introduced my clients to many different melodies and harmonic progressions that have never occurred to me as options for TMEs. It's been fun to learn these songs along with my clients, and she has inspired me to head back into my music library to use the resources that I have and to find more. I have been looking at fake books on Amazon recently. I love fake books and have gone through several of them in my career. I have the bits and pieces of several of them floating around my house, so it is time to get a new set of fake books. Right now, the most popular one is the Disney Fak...