[Meredith Pizzi]

I often say “Your child just has to be, they don’t need to do.”

[Meredith Pizzi]

Beautifully said, Leigh! Thank you.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Thanks for your comments, Cindy. We can all learn from someone who has lots of experience with mixed age groups. Is there a different way you approach parents or do you change the things you say to the grownups in this kind of group?

[Meredith Pizzi]

I can’t wait to hear all of the songs that all of you have created! We will have a place on the Sprouting Melodies Provider forum to share.

One way that I tell if a song that I wrote is really functional and fun is that the grownups will immediately join in and say “Oh, I know that song.” in response to a song I just wrote. That means that the song is constructed to feel natural and have immediate emotional meaning.

[Meredith Pizzi]

I remember the early years and trying to put together a collection of instruments (at that point I was working will all ages of clients). I do know that all these years later the good quality instruments I bought back then are still in good shape and going strong. It is amazing. So my recommendation is to buy the best quality instruments that you can.
For the little ones now, I love the chichitas.
For those of you in the Northeast…Woodstock Instruments located in upstate New York has a semi annual warehouse clearance sale. It usually runs for 3 days in May and November. People line up early and rush in with shopping carts to fill. I have gotten amazing instruments for 75 to 90 % off retail. Check out their website-http://www.chimes.com/. They also run contests to win free instruments from time to time.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Wonderful ideas, everyone! I love the way that you take the outlines of the music and have already begun to think about how to make it personal to you and to your groups. That is what makes music therapists in early childhood so special!

[Meredith Pizzi]

Thanks for the kind words about the book. Please post to the forum any questions or comments you might have. We will also have some time during our Week 9 conference call to dig deeper into the material.

[Meredith Pizzi]

We are planning to have an interactive forum for Sprouting Melodies Providers to share their own music with everyone. I suspect all of you have great material!

[Meredith Pizzi]

It sometimes does feel as if we are always explaining music therapy to people. I find, though, that the more I talk about it the clearer I become in my own mind and hopefully in my explanations. One reason I created the developmental framework is to help families and early childhood educators and administrators get the concept of addressing development and developmental concerns through music making rather than having them focus on single skill acquisition. Our ability to address global growth is unique.

[Meredith Pizzi]

There is a very interesting article in the 2011 Volume 2 issue of the AMTA journal Perspectives by Jayne Standley and Darcy Walworth (and others) on infant attentiveness in structured group music classes. The study looked at the differential in attentiveness in music vs no music and in two age ranges- 8 months and 16 months.
What stood out to me in the study, though, was that in both age groups, the infants attended primarily to the music therapist! This is certainly reinforced in my own work, where the children display intense focus toward me as the ‘music’. What I took from this research is that I as the music therapist need to work harder with children in the early developmental levels of awareness and trust to encourage the parent or care-giver to be the music source for the infant in order for attention to be focused toward them. In real terms, this means that I need to decrease the dynamics of my singing and encourage the families to sing out. I need to pull back physically sometimes from the circle in order to let the parents take center stage and I need to use gestures (such as pointing) or facial presence toward the parents in order to refocus the infant’s attention on their mom or dad or grandma.
If you don’t have access to the full article and would like a copy, just let me know.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Great idea, Alyssa. Has anyone on the list have experience with teen mothers? I did a program a number of years ago and found some challenges that were specific to the maturity of the mothers. There was quite a bit of parent education that needed to be done, and the music experiences seemed to give the girls a kind of ‘third focus’ (besides the baby, themselves and me) so that it was easier for me to provide quick thoughts to educate in a very informal, non-judgmental way. Those of you who are parents of older kids might remember how much easier it was to talk while driving in the car, so they kids didn’t have to make eye contact;-) The music seemed to provide some of that same non-threatening atmosphere.

[Meredith Pizzi]

There are wonderful materials on intergenerational music therapy by Joan Shaw.

[Meredith Pizzi]

As you work through the assignments for this week and the next two weeks, I am going to recommend that you save a copy of all the plans and the sentences for each group. Past participants have found these very helpful as they really began to put Sprouting Melodies into practice.

[Meredith Pizzi]

Congratulations on your music therapy presentation, Laura. This group has so many experienced music therapists and I know that they offer so many great ideas that you can draw on as you continue to advocate in your community. Cindy, I would love to hear more about the Early On and Starting Strong programs.

[Meredith Pizzi]

The best part of my groups, for me, is when I look around the circle and can’t tell which child belongs to which grownup. When all arms reach out to hug which ever kid comes skipping by. When a kid has a meltdown, and instead of a condescending look toward that child’s parent, the grownups all smile at each other and say ‘Oh, that was my kid last week.”

[Author]

Posts