Small but Mighty

These classes were small but mighty. This have the opportunity to ask the kids for their ideas and have some fun one on one connection!

Marching in a Circle

Now that we know each other, the kids were way more receptive to having a new teacher from the get go. They welcomed me with excitement and were ready to have some fun with our music singalong! The highlight was our movement song of the week, Elephants go Marching, in which they demonstrated how good they’re getting at marching on a circle as we walked with our big elephant steps.

Laughter is Blooming

We kicked off our spring session with an amazing evening of music and joy. Getting to know the participants we all had our turn to stand up and spin around as our names were included in The Hello Song. Highlights of our class were dancing to The Hokey Pokey and jamming to You Are My Sunshine.

Enthusiasm

When I arrived at Nellie’s for this music class, I encountered this specially excited group of kids and parents. It looked like they were eagerly waiting for the music to start! Throughout the whole class, all of them were super engaged in the actions, dances and singing. Highlight to our dance party to the sound of Hokey Pokey.

Music is a Universal Language

Last night's class started off with a request for Skin-a-ma-rink, which was received very well. The kids loved doing the actions and singing the silly words. It was requested by a young toddler girl who doesn't speak much English, and it was fun to see her come alive when we sang it. There are young twin girls in this class who don't speak much English, and it's really a lot of fun to see them enjoy the music and dance, even if they don't fully understand the words yet.

The highlights included pretending to be on bicycles while singing, I Have a Little Bicycle, and stopping and starting with the traffic lights. The rhythm sticks were also a hit.

Saved by the Bell

Today at the Redwood we had an incredible group of kids. Their age ranged from 2-12! They all worked together to explore and play with music. The class was suddenly interrupted by a fire alarm and we had to evacuate the building. When the fire department said it was safe to go back inside all the kids turned and asked if we can go back to music class! Luckily we still had time to jam together! This was a great class to get to know the kids and their interests. They are all excited to get into the music together!

Introducing the Glockenspiel

Working off the feedback from the kids after the last session, I pivoted our normal rhythm and movement focus into a session based more around vocals and instrument exploration. We did our normal physical warmup, then passed some rhythms around in a call and response circle, then did a vocal warmup, and continued in the same way, passing vocal explorations around and having the group mimic them. Some of the kids were very comfortable doing Mariah-style runs, and others were basically beatboxing. They're such a musically talented group! But the highlight was of course the intro to the glockenspiel, which they were so excited about. They shared the glockenspiels very well and were all comfortable playing scales in time with each other, and some even sang our solfege from earlier! It's also a good opportunity for them to practice sharing and not disrupting, which the staff were very helpful with in terms of taming the potential glockenspiel chaos. I think this will be a very useful tool with the group going forward!

Connections and Beginning in Music

The group members were first introduced to the concept of music therapy and what to expect from participation. The music therapist demonstrated how to play each instrument, as each instrument was shown various women commented on which instruments they were excited to play and which instruments they had a connection to. Each group member was invited to select an instrument and begin playing. We began with various structured musical games to begin to connect with one another and get acquainted with each instrument. Group members laughed and joked while playing each game. We then moved into free improvisation. One by one each participant added a musical layer to the group sound until everyone was playing. We continued playing, creating a beautiful musical improvisation. After engaging in music making we moved into listening. Each group member was invited to select a song of meaning to share with the group. We all listened to the selections and then engaged in a verbal debrief to share our thoughts and impressions of the song. Some people related the lyrics to their own experiences and memories. It was wonderful to hear everyone's thoughts and explore what resonated with each group member. To close, we created one final musical improvisation. Group members were asked to choose descriptive words to describe what we were about to create, the words shared were loud, fast, love, joy, happiness, spring and hope. We improvised around these words for several minutes trying to encapsulate each idea. As we concluded, group members felt that we did accomplish a sound that matched the description. Those words and the music will take us through each of our days! 

Getting to Know the Group

It was my first time teaching the music class at Birkdale. It took some time for the kids to get used to having a new teacher, but once they did we had lots of fun. I chose some classics like Wheels on The Bus, and Roly Poly to get things rolling and warm up for the session.

Go With the Flow!

This week's classes were the definition of ‘meet the kids where they are’. All of my class plans went out the window! In the toddler class one kid was so into animal toys that we sang every animal song we knew! We used the drums to sound like the feet of each animal moving fast and slow! In our school age class we were celebrating one student’s birthday! So we had a karaoke party!! They were gifted a karaoke microphone for their birthday so everyone got a turn to sing for the ‘audience’ it was awesome to see the school age kids sing solo even though they felt nervous!