Hey everyone welcome back to The Rhythm Tree, my name is Ryan Judd, I'm a board certified music therapist, here to give you some more great ideas and resources for using music to help children with special needs.
So the topic of conversation today is greetings. It's the foundation of social skills and interaction and I feel like learning greetings and practicing greetings through music is a wonderful way to do it. So, what I did is I took a familiar melody, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and I changed the words for you all, and here is what I came up with:
Hello, hello, hello my friends
It's time to sing
And play again
We're going to look
And say hi
We're going to look
And give a high five
Hello, hello, hello my friends
It's time to sing
And play again
Alright, so I'm having a little fun with the guitar today, but hey if you're not a guitarist, if you're not a musician, no big deal. You can spice it up with a slap clap pattern,
Hello, Hello, hello my friends
It's time to sing
And play again
Really livens it up, gives it that rhythmic element. If you're working with a group you definitely want to be able to give dramatic pauses and use a child's name in there to prompt them that hey it's your turn to practice your greeting. So
Jenny's going to look and say
So use that big pause in the music stopping the slap clap pattern is a really cool prompt for them to fill in the appropriate greeting.
If you are working with kids who are a little bit older, maybe middle school or high school, here's the same, pretty much the same melody, same chord progressions this is more for you guitarists out there, but with power cords and a cool little palm [00:02:13] back here. So, check it out:
Hello, hello, hello my friends
It's time for music
Music again
We're going to give our friends a high-five
We're going to give our friends a high-five
Hello, hello, hello my friends
It's time for music
Music again
Alright, rocking it out a little bit there, having some fun. So that's another great way to use this song.
If you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, please do. I've got a link right below, I'm giving you even more great songs, resources tips, app reviews. All sorts of great stuff in my free newsletter for my subscribers. And if you haven't checked out the website yet, please do, therhythmtree.com, I've got a store page on there too, with excellent DVD and music package that I put together and I just won some awards recently, so it's really exciting.
So I hope to all see you all in a couple of weeks, and I hope you've found this post useful and if you did please share it. Thanks so much, bye now.
The Rhythm Tree, LLC © 2014 : Privacy Policy