Music resources and videos
Our EACH Music Therapist and Lead Arts Therapist Katherine has put together some videos of music activities that you can enjoy with your children at home.
Hiding song
Adapting familiar songs
Videos from Jessie's Fund
These videos from Jessies’ Fund provide ideas of how to use music-making with children with additional needs in order to enhance their communication and emotional wellbeing. Introduced by Katherine, EACH Music Therapist and Lead Arts Therapist:
Exploring persussion instruments
This video provides a good basis for how to explore some percussion instruments with children. Watch the video and then try out with your child. Observe how they play or explore a particular instrument they are drawn to - and then try mirroring their ways of playing/exploring with another of the same instrument. You could then try two similar but different instruments. Look at different groups of instruments e.g. wooden/shakers/metallic. Do they prefer one texture or sound world over another? You could then try ‘stop and go’ playing together - starting slowly and getting faster and then stopping. The video has many other ideas to try out if the child is able to progress their/your joint explorations.
Musical conversations
This video provides lovely examples of ‘musical conversations’ and how to start these. By seeing which instrument the child is naturally drawn to, you can then join them with a different instrument. See how mirroring their sounds can move into to a dialogue with multiple opportunities for varying emotions to be expressed non-verbally and in ‘conversation’ with you. It is important to treat every sound/action they make as a communication to be listened to and acknowledged. This not only supports communication, but also encourages emotional expression and your responses can show the child you are listening to and supporting their emotions, whatever these may be in the moment.
Creating immersive musical environments
This video demonstrates how to create a multi-sensory environment to facilitate play and communication. Try turning your child’s favourite room into a ‘forest’ with dimmed, perhaps green lighting and where simple percussion instruments (wooden scrapers/rainsticks/shakers/ocean drums etc.) can add to the sounds of the forest environment. Also you could use YouTube nature clips such as this relaxing 8 hour nature sound video as a soundscape backdrop – try modelling how to add in other sounds using percussion. Silence can often be too daunting for some children and adults and these kinds of audio backdrops can help to encourage musical play as well as create a relaxing backdrop to your shared, creative environment.