Share Your Thoughts

[Meredith Pizzi]

Share some thoughts about the challenges of providing multi-age groupings.

[Dina Breaux]

I believe the biggest challenge for multi-age groupings is finding and/or creating music that appeals to and is appropriate for all ages. A song that is calming and soothing for a baby at the awareness or trust stages might not be enough stimulation for a 2 year old at the independent and control stages. Likewise, music that is geared toward 2 to 3 year old’s might cause sensory overload for a child of 6 months. Finding a balance will be the sometimes formidable task for the creative music therapist, but will give children at various developmental stages and their parents fun and engaging opportunities to share in the music making process.

[Gina Greeson]

The needs can be much different in a multi-aged group. Meeting these needs without overloading and boring the children/toddlers is quite a challenge! I think finding a happy medium is important. Finding a way to help the older children connect with parents during the less stimulating songs may work.

[Lauren Klimek]

I agree with you Gina and Dina, it can be very challenging at times to find that happy medium that suits all of the children’s needs but I think that this can be said for group work with any age group including adults. In my group work, I find that some children grasp the material sooner than others based on their developmental level and if I think they appear to be “bored” or just not interested anymore, I try to give them a “role” whether it be helping to collect the scarves by holding the bag during clean up or I sometimes will sing out their name and ask them, “what should we do next?” as we transition to another activity but I’m always being mindful to the needs of the group as a whole and I always leave ample opportunity for every child to express themselves and have their turn in shaping the format of the session.

[Joanna Calahan]

I agree with all of you! It can be difficult at times to create or implement interventions for various ages and abilities in multi-age groups. I have found that I have to have a plan that has at least 1-2 interventions or songs for each age, ability, and level; and from there I adapt to and for the group during the session. Like Lauren, I also give clients specific tasks or opportunities to lead the group if I find they are under-stimulate or disengaged. I also try to provide a mixture of tempi, volume, etc. so that way we aren’t staying at one energy level throughout the session.

[Megan Calabro]

Hi, all

With the small groups I’ve done, I have found that the most challenging part is striking s balance between what is “enough” for everyone, without overstimulating one child, or under-stimulating others. More often than not, I’m facilitating individual sessions, so groups have not been my forte. I will be starting to facilitate some demo groups at our child development center as part of our NICU follow-up clinic next week, and this is something that I’m actually a bit apprehensive about. These conversations have definitely been good food for thought, and things that I will be referring back to as I start this process.

[Anonymous]

As you each have said, running multi-age groups brings quite the challenge of meeting each age groupings needs. There are a variety of techniques you can use to balance this including giving older children responsibilities, monitoring and changing stimulation, and even giving parents recommendations on what they can do with their little ones to meet their needs. A technique I learned from Kristina is to direct parents of the young babies to turn the babies inward, away from the group, when they become overstimulated. If you become a Sprouting Melodies provider, you receive ongoing support from Meredith, Beth, an other providers on topics like this and other areas of your work.

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