Welcome back to The Rhythm Tree.
That was a clip of me working with one of my older clients and working on prepositions.
The most important point to make about this clip is that when you’re working with someone
with special needs and you’re requesting something from them, a response or an action,
you need to give them plenty of time to respond.
You need to be silent during this.
You can’t be asking the question over and over.
You really need to give them the space and time to respond.
It might be five seconds, 10, 20, 30 second of silence.
Obviously, it depends on the individual.
Some of my clients, if I give them 20 seconds of silent wait time, they’re already focused
on something else of distracted by something else.
So, it depends on the individual but one thing I noticed so many times when I see people
working with people with special needs and they don’t give them the opportunity to
process the information, process the response and give a response.
So, that’s very important.
Other points I want to make taking boring information like working on prepositions but
making it fun and motivating by putting it to music and using some instruments.
Also, getting that repetition without the monotony… how I say it over and over.
For instance, “It’s on the drum, it’s on the drum, it’s on the drum.”
Getting four or five repetitions within 10 seconds.
But, because it’s music, it doesn’t really get boring.
So, if you don’t have any instruments at home, you can start with this great, homemade
drum and all sorts of fun sounds you can get out of that.
The instructions for making a drum are on the homepage of my website towards the bottom.
So, if you want a quick, little project, it’s super easy to make.
Then, you can click on that link.
You can also, instead of using those rhythm sticks, you can use a pencil, a chopstick…
There’s all sorts of other ways to approach it given that also in the instructions and
ways to use it adaptively and therapeutically with people with special needs.
The last point I want to make using age-appropriate music.
When you’re working with older clients or you’re working with an older person with
special needs, adolescent or adult, always try to use age appropriate music when you
can.
I wrote a song about the prepositions and I could have put it to a ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’
melody or something but that one wouldn’t have been age appropriate.
So, I made it a little more fun, a lot more lively and upbeat.
Always be thinking about that when using music with people with special needs.
I hope you found this helpful and I hope you get those, making your own homemade drum instructions
and make one.
It is a lot of fun and tune in next week for another video at TheRhythmTree.com.
Thank you.