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    Emotional Awareness Emoji Song!

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    A big goal we work on with our clients is to help increase their emotional intelligence. This is a huge life skill that even I struggle with sometimes! How am I feeling? How should I express that in an appropriate way? Am I just sad because I’m actually hungry or tired? (Usually yes)! How is *that* person feeling? Emotional intelligence is a complex, multifaceted bundle of socio-emotional skills. However, we can target emotional intelligence step by step! The first step is to be able to identify emotions – and here’s where our new song, “Feel Me Maybe” comes in!

    This song teaches 10 common emotions in a fun and engaging way!

    Using music to teach important life skills is kind of my jam, and hopefully you’ll be jamming out to this lyric rewrite! Using familiar melodies also helps to grab attention and solidify learning faster. In addition to the 10 feelings shown in the song, it also validates that ALL feelings are okay. It also introduces the concept of a visual emotion choice board.

    Visual Choice Board for Emotions

    I hope you will be able to use this song purposefully at home, in school, or in sessions! Check out the full video here:

    “Feel Me Maybe” Full Video
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    Earth Day Story Song for Kids!

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    If you’re looking for a digital resource to celebrate Earth Day with children, “The 12 Hours of Earth Day” may be a great option! This digital song-based resource includes lyrics all about the natural world accompanied by beautiful visuals for each “hour” of Earth Day.

    It targets sequencing, memory and listening skills while also improving literacy and numeracy. It was designed by a music therapist and is available for purchase now as an e-book – but you can print off the pages at home if you prefer.

    It follows the melody of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” but can be simply read as a poem as well making it great for story time or music group. There’s an additional time telling element with a clock at the bottom of each page notating an hour of the day.

    At the end of the song you’ll find a separate sequencing activity to cement learning plus a page for students to draw in their favourite part of nature. I like to create lyrics for their drawing and add it as another verse in the song.

     

     

    I used it in a music therapy session today and my client loved it so much we ended up doing it 3 times in a row (at their request). I’ve never seen them focus on one activity for so long!

    Great for home schooling, the classroom or therapy sessions this singable e-book will make Earth Day activities a breath of fresh air! 

    Click Here to Learn More!

     

     

     

    HAPPY EARTH DAY!

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    4 EASY THINGS SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS CAN DO TO MAKE PASSIVE INCOME EVERYDAY!

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    If you’re a small business owner, this one’s for you! I know you are BUSY. Once our days are full sometimes it can feel like we’ve reached the top of our earning potential – but it’s not true! There are some easy things we can do to help us make money behind the scenes – without having to increase our direct client hours.  Read on for my top 4 ways you can start to build up some passive income in your business! 

    Open up a High Interest/High Yield Savings Account

    Chances are you have some money sitting in your bank account reserved for large expenses (like tax payments) as well as an emergency fund (I hope!). If this money is just sitting in your regular bank account then you are missing out on getting that money to work for you before you need it. At a regular brick and mortar bank you’re earning somewhere between 0%-1.5% in your savings account. My credit union offers 1% on my savings accounts. But, there’s a better option in town, and it’s an online bank called EQ Bank. They offer 2.5% interest on their Savings Plus Account (plus no monthly fees and free e-transfers). 

    If you use my referral link, when you open an account and fund it with at least $100 within 30 days you get $20 for free!*

    Get your cash back by clicking HERE!

    This is Canada-specific so if you’re in another country please do some research and check out your options! 

    Use a Cash-Back App like
    "Rakuten" when Shopping Online

    This really works, and you can use it for business and/or personal purchases! It’s totally free for you as well. You’ll be surprised how many online sites Rakuten works for and you receive between 1-3% (and sometimes up to 11%) back on the amount you spend.  I installed the google chrome extension and it easily reminds me to activate cash back before I make the purchases I need to make for the business anyways (or my latest personal obsession… H&M Home). 

    Use my referral link and you’ll get $30 free when you spend $30 online using Rakuten in Canada, or $40 back when you spend $40 using Rakuten in the USA.*

    Canada referral link: Click Here!

    USA referral link: Click Here!     

    Go get that money!

    Start Using Affiliate Marketing via Amazon

    Do you have tools that you love to use in your business? Are you constantly recommending something to your clients (that you don’t sell)? Sign up for business affiliate marketing through Amazon and get a small kickback (from Amazon – the price stays the same for your clients) every time someone purchases something you recommended (they must purchase through your personalized link to the product). Most people like the fact that they can support your small business further by purchasing something they were going to purchase anyways!

    Sell Digital Products!

    The best way to create passive income for yourself is to take your knowledge or a tool you already use and sell it as a digital product! This is the ultimate passive income because you create something once and can profit from it again and again. It could be a one page template, a checklist, a how-to guide, an ebook, prerecorded videos, audio files, or even an online course. You’ve already got the content so you just need to package it up! 

    Think about what would have been the most useful to you as a professional 5 years ago… what would others find valuable that would save them time and help them to “skip a step”? If you don’t want to set up a shop on your website or worry about payments you can use already established sites like Etsy or TeachersPayTeachers to sell your digital products! 

    I hope this post gave you some ideas on how you can increase your profits without increasing your workload!

     

    *I also benefit from you using my referral links so thank you so much for the support! They allow you to access special offers when following my links but if you’d prefer not to use them please don’t feel obligated. 

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    5 Ways to Use Music to Improve Speech! 

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    Anyone can harness the power of music to reach non-musical goals! In this blog post I’ll share the top 5 ways you can use music to help with speech development.
     Music activates the whole brain at once – making learning easier. Music, and especially singing, is the perfect activity to make repetitive tasks like practicing speech fun and engaging for children. 

    1. CHOOSE SONGS THAT REPEAT ONE WORD A LOT

    “Baby” by Justin Bieber anyone? With exactly 9 repetitions of the word “baby” in each chorus, this song is the perfect example of a song that uses a word a LOT! For children still working on improving letter sounds you can have them isolate the first letter of the repetitive word – in this case, /b/, instead of saying the entire word.  Other repetitive word songs include “Lollipop”, “Happy” and “Shake it Off”.

    2. USE SONGS WITH SILLY SOUNDS TO PRACTICE ORAL MOTOR MOVEMENTS

    Farm songs, vehicle songs, halloween songs or songs that feature a sound effect are great ways to reinforce some different oral motor movements! Or you can get really silly and try out some songs that sing a lot of sounds really fast like “Mmm-bop”, “Witch Doctor”, or “Blue (Da Ba Dee). 

    3. ANIMAL SONGS (ESPECIALLY MONKEY SONGS) ARE GREAT FOR PRACTICING VOWEL SOUNDS

    Need to work on vowel sounds like “oo”, “ee” and “ah”? Monkey songs are your greatest tool for this! Try out “I Wanna Be Like You” from Disney’s The Jungle Book or a the children’s hit “Matilda the Gorilla” (OK, so it’s not technically a monkey but you get the picture). 

    4. TAKE A FAMILIAR SONG AND REPLACE THE WORDS WITH "LA" (OR ANOTHER SYLLABLE)

    Simply sing along to your favourite song – but pretend you don’t know the actual lyrics (or maybe you don’t even have to pretend..). Try singing any syllable or switch it up part way through! 

    5. LEAVE OUT THE LAST WORD OF THE LINE

    “Twinkle, twinkle little…” 

    Did your brain automatically fill in the last line? We automatically want the musical phrase to resolve and leaving it open creates not only the opportunity but the urge for the child to fill it in! 

    MAKE IT FUN AND DON'T EXPECT PERFECTION

    Just put on the tunes and rock out! Remember, the goal is to practice – not to be perfect!

    If you want some done for you resources you can implement today, check out my digital resource bundle of 5 songs curated to work on improving speech. Each song includes an ebook with easy to read lyrics and colourful visuals, a high quality MP3 recording, an animated video, a chord chart and a how-to guide with ideas for implementation!

    Click HERE to Learn More about Songs For Speech Top 5 Bundle!
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    The 7 Domains of Music Therapy

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    Music Therapists use 7 domains to assess, form a treatment plan and evaluate our clients! Keep reading or watch the video below to learn about each domain and some common goal areas for each one!

     When someone asks what music therapy is, we usually say that music therapy is the use of music and musical elements to reach non-musical goals…

     So, still a little bit confusing!  I want to take you behind the scenes a little bit more and talk to you about the seven domains that music therapists use to assess, form goals and evaluate client progress!

    Our first domain is the social domain. There are a lot of social rituals in our society and someone with a disability may struggle with picking up on these unspoken social rituals and nonverbal cues. So they might need to learn them by practicing them. 

    Common goals in music therapy might be learning social rituals through singing a hello and goodbye at the start and end of sessions, practicing taking turns through call and response songs or passing instruments in a group and waiting for the client to initiate interaction before playing their preferred song or instrument! 

    The social domain is an important domain that we work on a lot, especially with our clients who are on the autism spectrum.

    Our second domain is the communication domain! This could be nonverbal or verbal forms of communication.  Even before learning words, some of our clients need to work on their letter or vowel sounds, improve their articulation and improve their oral motor skills.

    Some of our clients may be verbal, but they might be fairly hard to understand. So we can target articulation and strengthening oral motor skills through singing and playing instruments like harmonicas or kazoos.

    There’s lots of fun ways we can target oral motor skills in music therapy sessions. Singing especially is really great for the communication domain.

    Our third domain is the emotional domain. Emotional intelligence includes identifying emotions in yourself and others, having appropriate facial affect and having appropriate response to emotions. And it really includes being able to self-regulate and express emotions in a healthy way. So this can be a really tricky domain to work on –  learning how to ask for a break when you’re frustrated or even recognizing the signs of frustration in yourself can be very tricky for some of our clients.

    If we can help a client to combine the emotional and communication domains and recognize that they’re feeling frustrated and then ask for a break, that can be really beneficial. So you can start to see how our domains kind of do blend together once we start targeting specific goals and that’s okay. 

     

    The fourth domain we’re going to talk about is the physical domain. This could be be fine motor skills, gross motor skills, physical coordination, crossing the midline height or improving improving range of motion. I love to use drums as targets for this. We can also use castanets to work on our pincher grip or use the piano to work on finger isolization. So you can see how instruments are the perfect way to target physical goals!

    You might walk into a music therapy session and think we’re just having fun, but we actually are specifically choosing instruments in a purposeful way to strengthen our client’s deficits.

    Our fifth domain is the cognitive, or mental, domain. This would include attention span, focus, memory skills,  patterning and sequencing. So a question I get asked a lot is what is the difference between patterns and sequences?  Patterns are something that repeats and always stays the same, like in the song “If You’re Happy and You Know it”, we always clap two times at end of that line and it never changes. But in a song like “There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly” or “The Green Grass Grows all Around”,  we’re continually adding one more item to our sequence. So you can see how patterns and sequencing can be really important in real life for remembering phone numbers or multi-step instructions. And of course, we’re always working on trying to elongate attention span (even me)!

    The sixth domain is the musical domain. We might work on client independence and autonomy by having them write and record a song that they wrote. We might also want to see if the client can follow along if I start playing louder or softer, if I start playing faster or slower, can they follow those basic musical elements if I change them up on them? 

    Also, are they able to keep a steady beat with me? This is really important in self-regulation as well, to be able to keep that steady beat. So again, we’re starting to see crossover of the domains and that’s okay. 

    We can also see if our clients respond better to singing instructions rather than just speaking instructions verbally. This is important information that parents or teachers could implement outside of sessions. 

    The seventh domain is the spiritual domain. This would include self identity, self confidence and self esteem. And of course, awareness of self. Who do I identify as – am I aware I have a disability? Do I identify myself as being disabled? Or differently abled? Do I want to say I am autistic or do I want to say I’m a person with autism? 

    How do I see myself and how do I want others to see me? 

    What are my beliefs and how important are they to me? How do I want to express them musically? 

    Thanks for learning about the 7 domains of Music Therapy with me! I hope that gives you a little bit of insight into how Music Therapy can set goals and objectives in an intentional way!