Music for Babies: Merrily We Roll the Ball

"Do you play ball with her?" my mom asked me when my second child was 9 months. 

"Um, we explore and play with them but we don't like sit on the floor and roll it to each other yet.  I don't think she can yet."

"Well, she'll learn.  You just need to practice with her.  When you were her age I would come home from teaching and we would play ball."  

"I know, but she may not be at that developmental milestone yet." I told her as she sat down across from Adelyn to roll the ball back and forth with her. 

Well, she couldn't do it yet, but she sure did love it. And I realized after a while that she was trying to roll it.  It looked like a little jerk of her hand and foot.  Well, who knew? Obviously, not me and obviously I didn't spend much of my time as a music therapist working on motor skills with babies. 

So after that I played a lot of "ball" with Adelyn.  Of course, she loved it. How many babies do I know that were in love with rolling objects by the time they turned one?  My three year old son loved watching and trying it with her too. 

Here is a video of my third child practicing to roll a ball with me.  He is just about 8 months.  As most babies do, he also loves to play ball!  Here I used the tune of London Bridge and made a spin off of the song, Merrily we Roll Along (same tune as Mary Had a Little Lamb), changing the words to Merrily We Roll the Ball. In this version, the time that each of you receive the ball has a slightly different melody than the time that you roll it. 

If you are looking for fun songs and music activities to do with your baby (or toddler), this may be one you both enjoy and a great way to teach other children to play with the younger ones. This activity can benefit gross motor skills, eye contact, turn taking, impulse control, object identification, names of people, and also of course, provides another opportunity for quality time where all participants are interacting together.

Happy rolling along!

Developmental Speech and Language Training- Letter Sounds Practice- Little Green Frog

I used the Little Green Frog Song to help a student articulate letter sounds and also blend some sounds together.  This can be effective with students who have apraxia as well.  

I have recently changed this activity so that the students can place the letter they are working on, on a lily pad at the end of the song. This also gives them the opportunity to choose the correct letter from a few choices. Another way to do this file folder is to have them put the frog on the lily pad with the correct letter.

Suggestions to Try at Home to Stimulate Speech Using Music

While I am still working towards getting some music videos of ways to use speech and music up here, I thought I should go ahead and just post a list of common suggestions I give to parents to try and stimulate and improve speech at home.

The great thing about music therapy is that when the client's are engaged in the music, they often forget that they are doing work! The brain cannot process information when it is stressed, so music can be a stress reducer and allow the brain to take in more information. Between pitch, rhythm, and lyrics, their are constantly new ways to explore music and create new experiences.  Clients also have an opportunity to try new things and they are set up for success in creating their own music or inputting their own ideas. In addition, music is providing alternate neuro pathways in learning. 

I am not a speech pathologist. I do work with them in my job in the schools.  I do know that speech is complicated. Our brain is very busy when we listen to speech and say it ourselves. In order to process one word like "hello," our brain has to:

1.  "catch" all of the sounds (h, e, l, oh) 
2. learn each sound, 
3. learn how to recreate each sound, 
4. put them in order
5. store them in memory
6. know the meaning behind the word (hello is a greeting you say when you see someone)

Here are a few ways to try music at home to encourage speech using music.


Last Lyric
Sing familiar songs and have the child fill in the last word of a line.  The last word of a line is often a point in the music that compels a person to sing/hum the last pitch.  A very basic example is, "Row row row your boat gently down the _______.  Merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a _______."  It feels very strange to leave off the last word. 

Vowel Singing
Pick a vowel sound and sing it to a familiar tune.  I often use Little Bitty Pretty One.  Oh oh oh oh oh or ah ah ah ah ah. 

Syllable Singing
Pick a sound or syllable to practice such as "ba," "do," or "me" and sing it to a familiar tune instead of the lyrics.  ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba baaaa.
This is much easier on our auditory tracking. Our brain has time to "catch" the sound being heard and learn the sound because it's only two sounds rather than the large number of sounds that fill up a sentence.  For instance, "Row row row your boat gently down the stream" has about 19 different sounds that the brain has to sequence and put in order after catching each one.  In the word "row," it catches the "r" sound and the "ow" sound and puts it in order. Our brains do a lot of work to make a sentence! 

Sound Sequence
Sequence 2 or 3 sound together (after mastering example 3) and sing it to a familiar tune.  For example, "ba bee ba bee ba bee."    When that is mastered change the consonant in the second syllable, but use the same vowel again (ba da ba da ba da).  The next step may be to do two different consonants and two different vowels (ba de ba de ba de).  

Tapping
Have opportunities to break up syllables in words by tapping them out.  I frequently use this for rate of speech.  One student I worked with had unintelligible speech because of articulation and also how fast she tried to fly through her words.  Having her tap out each syllable on her leg helped tremendously.  When I demonstrated tapping while I spoke, she was also able to better hear each sound of each syllable.  I highly recommend this for rate of speech and articulation.  Use drums, shakers, and other creative ways to make sounds.

Blowing Instruments
If breath support is an issue, try having the children try out recorders and then kazoos.  


Songs that have Repeated Syllables
Lemondrops and Gumdrops (ah, ah ah)
Little Bitty Pretty One
Menahmena (Sesame Street)
Down on Grandpa's Farm (animal sounds that echo)
Little Green Frog (Ah Ah said the little green frog)
Runaround Sue (hey)
Crocodile Rock (la...la la la la la)
Biddy Biddy (Music Together)
Stick Tune (Music Together)

More Advanced
Do Wah Diddy
Ooh EE Ooh Ah Ah
Trashin the Camp- Tarzan Soundtrack

Including "is" + "location" in Speech

I recently did an evaluation on a student who is working on an objective in speech to work on using the word "is" + a location.  For example, "The pig IS IN the mud."

Problem/Sensory issues

The problem here is that our student (let's call him Frank), leaves out the "is" and sometimes other parts of the sentence.  He does get both of the subjects which is helpful to those of us participating in conversations with him.

Anyhow, the idea to use music to help was to slow the speech down to help with his auditory tracking and processing and place emphasis on the "is" and the location.  Successful auditory tracking requires our brain to track or "catch" the sequence of sounds heard, re-create the sounds (requires short-term memory), organize and determine relationships between each sound (put in order), and then file into memory.  Frank is only processing parts of the sentence and it happens to be the important words like the two subjects and the verb (The boy going store).

Successful music

I found that putting the selected sentence to the tune of Sally is Wearing a Red Dress worked very well. It's an old Wee Sing song.  You can hear me singing it with my kids (not clients) in the video above.

This piece:

1. Is in 6/8 time which creates the "swaying" feeling, heavily emphasizing each beat.
2. Is slow enough to give Frank more processing time on each syllable.  
3. Has 4 phrases which gives the opportunity to repeat the sentence 4 times and help with filing the sounds into memory.

Steps for the Intervention

1. Present a visual (I used speech cards from Artic. You can also use something like a box and an animal or manipulative)
2. Sing the entire song (a capella).
3. Take turns singing each line (you go first).
4. Repeat as necessary.
5. When they master the objective or several sentences add some accompaniment to make it more fun.

Example Sentence

The pig...is....in..the barn. 

The pig...is...in..the barn.

The pig...is...in the barn.

The pig is in the barn.

ABC Play Doh

We did the good old play doh with alphabet cookie cutters which was the perfect Friday activity for us.  We are reviewing the letters Adelyn has learned so far from our "No Time for Flashcards" art which I still need to post!  I love play doh time and it's so good for fine motor skills (including speech...not only talking about the things they make but also because speech is a fine motor skill and improving all types of fine motor skills assists with speech development in that frontal lobe of the brain)!