Back to School Tools for MTs

Whether you’re a first-year music therapist or a veteran, back-to-school time can be chaotic! Here are some tangible tools and tricks that will make the transition from sun and waves to desks and classrooms a little easier.

1. Get To Know You Games

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Free PDF Printable: 124 Summer Fun THIS OR THAT QUESTIONS

Play this game of summer this or that questions with your kids at the pool, at barbecues, or anywhere. You'll be talking and laughing!

Your students may already know each other from the year before, but odds are you’ll have some new faces! You can incorporate icebreaker questions into musical interventions to help your students get to know each other (and help you get to know them) a little better.

You could do this with a “This or That” activity! My favorite way to facilitate this game is to have clients answer using instruments. I pass out 1 bell and 1 egg shaker to each student and assign one to each this or that choice. For example, if the choices are apples or bananas, I might say “shake your bells for apples” or “shake your eggs for bananas.” This simultaneously adds a challenge of impulse control (you have to use your instrument instead of your voice) and makes the activity more accessible for any nonspeaking communicators.

2. Instrument Exploration

This might seem obvious, but structured instrument exploration can be a great way to figure out what your students like and dislike. It’s also a great way to get them excited about the upcoming year in music therapy! Show them how all the instruments work, answer their questions, and encourage them to try something new. Hopefully, you’ll notice lots of natural play opportunities pop up during this time–don’t be afraid to jump in and embrace the spontaneity of the moment! Provide a steady, predictable rhythmic and harmonic structure, and let the students guide the experience. We have an awesome song resource for this in our Music Therapist's Toolkit called Let's Explore!

3. Playlist Building

Kids love to talk about the music they love! Making playlists for different activities and moods fosters reciprocal interactions between students and gives a creative outlet. You might consider making a dance music playlist to put on shuffle whenever you do a movement activity. You could make playlists that match certain emotions and use those if there comes a day that music listening is just what your group needs. You could also create a “daylist” similar to the ones Spotify curates.

Plug a bunch of describing words into a virtual wheel spinner, choose 4, and create a playlist to match those 4 words. Creating all these playlists will also help you become familiar with the group’s preferred and disliked music!

4. Music Expectations

You would be surprised at how excited some students are to create a list of “rules” or “expectations” for the year! This can be a great opportunity to learn what boundaries your students have, what expectations your teachers have, and areas of growth for the coming year. Here’s an example of a list my students have created in the past:

5. Zones of Regulation

Teachers have told me time and time again that having a zone check-in song is one of the most helpful music therapy tools to use in their daily instruction time!

The zones of regulation are an emotion identification system that corresponds with colors. Green typically means happy, calm, and overall regulated. Yellow might mean excited, silly, or frustrated. Red generally means angry, upset, or out of control. Blue typically means tired, sick, or sad. There are plenty of visuals that might work for you and your students (some like the Inside Out characters, others like a generic visual, etc.). Need a song for that? We've got you covered!

6. Boomwhacker YouTube Videos

Kids of ALL ages are thrilled when boomwhackers are brought into the classroom. Several YouTube channels specialize in boomwhacker play-alongs with nearly any song you can think of, from Sabrina Carpenter to Disney. A personal favorite of mine is Emil Play Along. If your group is ready for the next step, Chrome Music Lab has an accessible beat creator that uses the same colors as boomwhackers–you can use this to help your students create their own boomwhacker songs to follow! 

7. What Do You Meme?

I’ve had a lot of success with using the latest internet joke (recently, it’s been “Italian brainrot”) to get students excited about music therapy. "What Do You Meme?" has similar mechanics to “Apples to Apples,” but instead of words, it uses meme photos. Each student gets 3 memes to start. Next, the therapist plays a song, and while they’re listening, the students pick a meme that they think matches the song best. Finally, the students go around the group and share why they chose their memes. This game breaks the ice and begins to foster creativity and communication, making it a great choice for the first weeks of school.

8. Music Bingo Maker

During the first weeks of school, you’ll probably be looking for ways to incorporate client-preferred music. Building a music bingo card with artists or songs that clients choose is a great way to get everyone bought in. This is an easily adaptable activity that all students can have a role in creating. In one session, you could have everyone take turns sharing their favorite artists/songs and plug them into an online bingo card generator. In the next session, you might play the songs and have the students work together to guess the song. As you listen along, cross off the artists/songs as you go. You can also create new bingo cards as the year goes along–here’s an example of a Halloween bingo card my students made this past year!

I hope these resources help give you a jumping-off point for the coming school year. Best of luck and soak in every moment!

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