Thursday, 29 August 2013

Five Tips for Making Back to School Easier For Families of Children with Special Needs


Can you believe it? I know many parents are cheering right now that its back to school time. However, I know those of you with children with special needs are probably feeling something quite the opposite.  Back to school time can mean lots of anxiety, tantrums, and stress!
Here is a short list of things you can do to help your child transition back to school:

1.Begin Introducing Day/Night Schedules

          Your child has been on summer vacation mode and it will be a challenge to quickly get them into a different routine. So get a jump on it by gradually setting earlier bedtimes each night, and reintroducing regular morning rituals such as waking earlier, combing hair, and brushing teeth.   You might even take them for a short drive in the car afterwards to get them used to leaving the house. 

2. Start Introducing School Routines at Home

            From a teacher’s perspective, the challenge is getting children to pay attention and do their homework.   You can help by giving your child small tasks at home to practice, such as spelling a word or staying seated while working on a puzzle.  This will help them get used to staying in their seats for longer periods of time.

3. Take Practice Runs

         After introducing some school morning rituals, why not actually take your child to school?  This will help familiarize them with the trip and they’ll be less anxious and better prepared for that first day of school.   

4. Take Pictures

            Take pictures of the school, the classroom and the teacher on the first day (with permission of course).  You can use these at home as visual aids to help your child understand the order in which things are scheduled to happen over the course of the day.  This should greatly reduce anxiety about the “unknown.”

5. Make it Fun and Musical for Everyone

            While practicing these transitions and routines it’s easy to get frustrated or anxious, so I’d recommend turning them into a game or a musical.  You can make transitions easy by singing while you are doing them. For example, if it’s time to brush our teeth, you might sing “Brush our Teeth, Brush our Teeth” to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”  You don’t need to be a music genius.  Just be creative and make it fun!


I hope these tips will help you start off the school year on a positive note!  Best of luck and please click the links below for more FREE tips and hints on keeping your home, life and family relationships healthy and vibrant.

Join us on:




For Email Marketing you can trust

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Abundance: Music Therapists Sharing Favourite Apps


At our annual MTABC (Music Therapy Association of BC) business meeting I was struck by something that one of the presenters said.  We need to focus on abundance and less on lack," she said.  Those words have stayed with me all week.
I was there to present my favourite iPad apps and how they can be very helpful tools to music therapists. There truly is an abundance of great apps helpful for music therapists, and some of these are even free. I was happy to share my favorites, and to explain why I found them to be so useful. 

I'd like to continue sharing the abundance of these great tools, so I thought I'd post my favorites here too. I invited all music therapists in attendance to post their favorites as well. That way everyone benefits!

Here is a list of our favourite apps for music therapists from MTABC. Many of these apps can be used across multiple populations. I have done my best to put them in categories according to appropriate population benefit.

Enjoy!

Multiple Populations:

iGuitar
iAutoharp
Noteshelf
Celtic Harp
Accordeon
Virtuoso
Garageband
Recorder HD
History of Rock
History of Jazz
Small Talk Phonemes

Adults:  Mental Health, Brain Injury, Geriatrics and 
Speech and Language

Trivia Tunes
3D Brain
Small Talk Dysphagia
Small Talk Oral Motor

Toddlers:

Baby Chords
Piano Pals

Children/Teens:

Songify – Turn Speech Into Music
iXylophone
Dust Buster
Wild Chords
Pic Card Maker
Endless ABC
Vid Rhythm
Harmonizer
Magic Piano
Falling Stars
Glee Karaoke
Beatwave

Music Therapists: Helpful Tools

Turboscan – quickly scan multi page documents into high-quality PDFs
DeepDish GigBook – Organizing all your songs
Capo
iReal b – Music Book and Play along
NoteStar





Monday, 18 February 2013

Don't take it from me, its in the Research! Music Therapy and Autism: Significant Supporting Evidence


I can't count how many times I've been asked by parents and other professionals about scientific evidence to prove the efficacy of music therapy interventions with children with autism.  The study in the link below was conducted in comparison to other non-music based therapies, and the evidence was....significant!
I encourage you to click on the link below to learn more about how music therapy can help a child with autism.  I have seen these effects everyday for the past ten years and am excited to finally be able to share with you the research that supports our daily work.

Here are just a few highlights of what the researcher found:
- Music Therapy produced longer events of joy and engagement of initiation
- Music Therapy develops social skills
- Music Therapy is effective in increasing attention, focus, behavioural cues and interests
- With Music Therapy, children were better able to express their emotions and share them with others.
- There is significant evidence that Music Therapy supports social, emotional and motivational development in children with autism.

I often say to parents, "once a child is motivated and is having fun, their self-esteem is elevated."  A child with confidence can achieve more and will often work harder.  This is fundamental to our strength-based music therapy programs.  We begin with an improvisational program, building upon areas of strenght to build confidence.  We then massage this into the overall goals and objectives of the program.  We have found this approach results in early successes and improved overall outcomes, just like this research indicates.  So don't take it from me, read the research yourself!

Here's the link:


Best Practice Autism: Autism and Improvisational Music Therapy

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Mewsic Moves in Media!

We were so delighted to be interviewed by Janis Warren from the Tri-City News!

Janis came to our office to interview me about the benefits of music therapy and to help celebrate our new office opening in Coquitlam. Janis' timing was musically in sync as she happened to stopped by when the Glee Choir was midst rehearsing some of their favourite songs.

Janis decided to take some pictures and captured the moment in a beautiful way. Please find Janis' story below on music therapy and how we help Connect the Community through Music. Thank you Janis for such a moving story.
Making The Music Connection by Janis Warren, Tri-City News





Sunday, 20 January 2013

Glee Choir Performs and Receives Community Support!


Ever since I began my music therapy practice some eight years ago, I have looked for ways to expand the reach of my practice, and to bring the benefits of music therapy to more families.  So at this year’s MTABC conference, I was keenly interested in Johanne Broheur’s workshop on grant writing and fundraising.

At Mewsic Moves, we have had great success with various programs over the years.  We’ve been particularly pleased with the success of our Glee Choir program, which we started last year.  This program is a result of a long held dream of mine to offer a place for those with special needs a platform to express their joy and love for music. 

We ran multiple sessions of the Glee Choir program over the past year.  The members were so excited to share music and it was obvious that they loved performing.  Their joy and enthusiasm was truly irrepressible, and we felt we needed to culminate the year with a Christmas performance. 
We made the decision to put on the concert just two short weeks beforehand.  It began with a community school donating space, lighting, sound and volunteers!  We were overwhelmed with the support of the local businesses that donated dinners, Festival of Lights tickets, artwork, gift cards and numerous other gifts, which we used to raise money for future music therapy programs for those with financial challenges.   

We had over 100 friends, family and supporters in attendance.  The night was filled with smiles and joy, beaming parents, and amazing music straight from the heart. All of us at Mewsic Moves were deeply touched by this heartfelt performance.  It rekindled a passion within me to expand the horizons of our practice.  Since we were able to create such a beautiful event in just two weeks, imagine what we could do with more time to plan!

So we are planning another Glee Choir this summer, which will be even more amazing.  We hope to raise even more money to expand the number of programs we can offer, particularly for those who have challenging financial conditions. 

So we look forward to the continue expansion of our horizons in our quest to bring the benefits of music therapy to more of those who can benefit from it. I encourage all of your to join me in setting your vision to a new heights this year and do your part to advocate and promote music therapy in all your workplaces and communities!

Happy Expanded Horizons!


Check out some of our photos from our Concert: December 14, 2012