Here is another idea for from my recycled art project collection.   Making these vases really involve a lot of fine motor skills and they look great! Collect and clean out a variety of glass bottles, any size and shape.

1. Rip or cut small pieces of masking tape and place them in random order around the bottle.  Make sure to cover up any spaces.

2. Paint the entire bottle one color and allow one day to dry.  (You can skip this step if you need to complete the project in one session.)

3. Have the student select a main color to use and have a small amount of white or black paint on the pallet.

4. Using Q-tips, dip the Q-tip into the paint and dab it onto the bottle.  Without cleaning the Q-tip, dip in white or black to lighten or darken the shade of the main color.  Continue dabbing the bottle until it is completely covered.  Usually I will have a student change Q-tips once or twice throughout.

5. Allow the vase to dry, usually one day.

6. Decorate with a fresh cut flower or make a flower to add to the vase.  (I used some hydrangeas from my garden!)

7. If you are going to put these out on display, soak a paper towel and wrap it around the end of the flower.  Squeeze it into the bottle.  This way if anyone accidently knocks it over, you won’t have a big mess to clean up!

This clip demonstrates one way to use open tuning with a student taking adaptive guitar lessons.  In this case the guitar is open tuned to a G chord. (D G D g b d).

Standard tuning: E  A  D  g  b  e

Open tuning to G:  (E tunes down to D), (A tunes down to G), (D stays the same), (g stays the same), (b stays the same), (e tunes down to d).

Now, when the student strums the strings, the open string pitches create a G chord.

Patty is a student with Cerebral palsy at the David Hochstein Memorial School of Music & Dance.  In this clip Patty is strumming the open G chord while singing words at the end of phrases to help with her speech, fine motor skills, memory skills, and coordination skills. Patty wrote the lyrics for this song to express her desire to play guitar and not give up!  I typed out a lyric sheet for her to follow and underlined the words I wanted her to strum on.

I WON’T GIVE UP

Things might be hard,

Things might be tough,

But I try my best

And I won’t give up.

No, not me.

No, not me.

No, not me.

No, not me.

Things might be difficult.

Things might be painful.

But I try my best,

And I won’t give up.

No, not me.

No, not me.

No, not me.

No, not me.

For my upcoming CMTE course, “Songwriter’s Garden” at the AMTA Music Therapy Conference in Cleveland, I am developing a songwriter’s profile based on the four classical elements and the four quadrants of the brain.  If you would like to take the “teaser” assessment, you can download the directions and assessment here:

Songwriting Assessment

songassessmentscore

I would love to for you to share your results, discoveries, and impressions.  You can leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly:  wade@timeformusic.org

Kayla is a bright and beautiful new student at the Hochstein School of Music & Dance.  Kayla has Cerebral palsy and uses music to express her feelings and challenges through songwriting and instrument play.  She is also using music to gain strength in her right hand and increase her overall motor coordination.

The songwriting experience with Kayla involves a variety of steps to tap into her creativity in order to compose song lyrics.  This could be a “monologue in a minute” where I encourage Kayla to act out a feeling, experience, or idea by just talking.  Often she comes up with an impressive mix of vocabulary, phrases, and themes.  In this session, Kayla talked about how important music was to help her find her freedom and express herself.  I then challenged some of her ideas by asking her to create opposite statements to “free like a bird” and “beauty of music”.  Together we created “my wings are tied” and “my day is gray”.  Kayla felt these lines better expressed her feelings, so we kept them in the song.

“MY MUSIC”

by Kayla and Wade

When I’m alone,

No one there.

I find a friend in my music.

Find my freedom.

Clear my mind.

Sing my song to pass the time away.

When my day’s gray

And my wings are tied

I find a friend in my music.

Find my freedom.

Clear my mind.

Sing my song to pass the time away.

When I’m alone,

No one there.

I find a friend in my music.

I have been enjoying instructing the art portion of our Therapeutic Arts Program at Hochstein.  We have recently started a care for the earth theme with recycle, reduce, and renew concepts.  In this group project I used plastic bottle bottoms and caps, recycled house paint and brushes, and cardboard to create a beautiful flower garden.  Here are the simple steps:

1. Cut off the bottoms of plastic soda and water bottles, save the tops.

2. Use a  white paint primer to coat the bottles and tops.

3. Create flowers using a mixture of old house paint (add acrylic paint to tint), encourage color blending to shade.  We used Q-tips to apply the paint.  Decorate the tops with ladybugs, mushrooms, leaves, bugs, etc.

4. Use old cardboard to create the background.  Use a mix of green and white to create the grassy garden background.  Use an old paintbrush and hold it straight up to dab on the paint to create the texture of grass.

5. When dry (next class), have students one-at-a-time place the flowers/decorated tops on the background.  Encourage cooperation and expressive language skills, “Your turn Mary.”

6. After all the flowers are placed, I used a glue gun to secure the flowers.

7. Musical connection: Find a song about flowers or gardens to share.  You can also create your own song with concepts like- unique, one-of-a-kind, together but different, beauty when we create together, grow and blossom.

Patty is a student with Cerebral palsy in the Music Therapy program at the Hochstein School of Music & Dance.  In this clip, Patty is following a symbolic picture board in order to recall her sequence of movements.  In the first step, Patty created her own movement for each picture shown to her.  The next step involved me extending her original movement to “stretch” her use of space and levels.  For example, the first picture used resembled a rainbow.  Patty first moved by just taking a step forward.  In the extension, I asked her to add her hands while stepping forward.  After all 4 pictures were choreographed in some way, Patty decided on the order.  The third step was to add other dancers.  Two interns assisted in echoing Patty’s movements.  It was important for Patty to complete this experience without any verbal or physical prompting, which she was able to do using only the picture of symbols to help her recall each movement.  Behind the camera is a full-length dance mirror so Patty could watch the interns complete their movements before starting the next one.