Incorporating adapted music materials across the school day is easy using principles of music therapy such as ‘receptive’, or listening based, and ‘active’, playing based lessons. These ideals, coupled with special education principals such as wait-time and student choice, can yield to student cognitive, communicative, emotional, physical and social growth across the school day!
Adapted Music Materials
Song Board
One of the most used musical materials in my classroom is an oversized song choice board. This tool gives students the opportunity to choose songs to listen and sing. This simple creation allows students to work on a variety of skills such as fine motor skills when pulling and putting the cards on and off, communication skills when picking the desired song, and social skills such as turn-taking. The song board is used during morning meeting, rotations, recess, and playtimes. When looking for song icons, we found a general picture that could be easily interpreted by the students. Additionally, we tried to match the picture icons from the student AAC devices.
DIY Song Board Materials:
- Posterboard
- Song cards
- Laminator
- Velcro
Boomwhackers
The next adapted music material that is used in my classroom across the day are Boomwhackers (affiliate link). Boomwhackers are colorful percussion tubes that are loved by students and staff alike! In my classroom we use Boomwhackers to help keep the beat, count syllables, for concept development such as fast and slow, color identification, and student play. The tubes range in length depending on the note, but are all easily able to be held by students. The above set of Boomwhackers are C Major Diatonic Scale (the white keys on a piano).
Hand and Foot Percussion Instruments
As illustrated in the above photo, having hand and foot powered instruments in the classroom allow for students to have independence in playing music regardless of their fine and gross motor skills. In my classroom we incorporate these instruments across the day. Specifically, my students enjoy having the foot tambourine attached to their shoes. During recess, these instruments are used to play a hide and seek type game. For this game the student hides around the playground and shakes an instrument until the seeker finds them. Additionally, we use these instruments to practice rote counting, keeping the beat, holding objects for extended periods of time, and musical concepts such as fast/slow and loud/quiet.
Thematic Song Book
In my classroom we have bi-weekly themes. One of our daily rotations is music based. During this time students have the opportunity to interact with different instruments, songs, and musical toys. This school year we created a song book that we add to with every theme. This helps staff be able to reference the lyrics and accompany the students in engaging with the music and instruments. My students have made great communication gains through song repetition.
DIY Song Book Materials
- Binder
- Printed song lyrics
- Laminator
Chrome Music Lab
Chrome Music Lab is a Google Chrome experiment that makes music creation accessible and fun! Each experiment focuses on different aspects of music such as pitch, tempo, melody, and rhythm. It has been helpful to my students to use a touch-screen device when using Chrome Music Lab instead of a mouse-activated laptop. Users can work on fine motor skills by drawing music, visual efficiency through “seeing music”, and communication by layering verbal sound over instruments.
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