A prop I particularly love are movement scarves. Movement scarves are a versatile tool for engaging children in fun and creative movement.
Lemonade, Lemonade is a step-by-step fingerplay song about making this refreshing summery sweet treat!
If you are teaching kids about kindness in your classroom or therapy sessions and need some song ideas, keep reading for some of my favorite children’s songs about kindness.
We had some weekend visitors stay at our house not too long ago and they brought their sweet 18-month old. He was sick, missed a nap and was overstimulated after a long day in the sun. Predictably, he had a rough time calming down for a nap. Before long, it escalated to him being completely inconsolable. Within minutes, he was fast asleep. The method I used is something I've used time and time again with music therapy clients and my own daughter.
I'd like to think that the first 6 months of my daughter's life were only blissful and carefree... uh, nope. It was HARD. She was a preemie with sensory issues that she (mostly) outgrew, but the sight of a ceiling fan could send her into an I-WILL-SCREAM-AND-NOTHING-WILL-CALM-ME meltdown that would simultaneously send me into my own special kind of meltdown.
It's no coincidence that I am so passionate about helping parents and educators find the right music that can help kids through life's (inevitable) challenges. Being a music therapist who worked with kids with sensory needs set me up to be the ideal parent for my own daughter. The process was FAR from perfect, but we learned a lot together.
Something I didn't expect??? Music helped ME in a miraculous kind of way.
Music is not one-size-fits-all and every child is going to react differently. In this list, you'll find music that could work for sleep/rest, music for play time, music for learning, etc. We could get really complicated here, but we're not going to! Plain and simple: these are my all-time favorite songs for babies.
