Hey everyone! It’s Alexa and Lyndie here. We are so excited to share this blog post with FIFTEEN different songs that you can use at home or in your classrooms! They focus on activities of daily living, social and emotional, and community goals. We love getting teacher and parent feedback and requests and incorporating that into our music therapy goals!

Activities of Daily Living

What Do You Wear?

Materials: visuals of clothing items, small containers, visuals of weather types and/or temperature

Tune: Buffalo Gals

Lyrics: What can you wear when it’s cold outside, cold outside, cold outside? What can you wear when it’s cold outside to keep your head warm?

How to play: Attach weather visuals to 3 containers- I do rainy, snowy, and sunny but could be modified to just include Hot/Cold for clearer contrast.  Sing song and insert different clues  (ex-to keep your feet dry, to keep your legs cool) and have client find correct clothing item visual and place in corresponding bucket.  If this is too challenging, you can have appropriate clothing items already placed in correct container.  Then you could sing the song without the clue and insert “pick one out and see” and have client pick one out and identify it.

Make it your own: Add pictures of the client’s actual clothing items to make it even more specific

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Taking a Bath

Materials: Steps for washing your body parts, or steps for the showering process. We also found a great list of popular items that would be in a typical bathroom found here. Or Pictures of things in your bathroom, or general pictures. Examples of popular bathroom items We cut out these pictures into squares

Tune: Baby shark

Lyrics: Wash your hair doo doo doo do do da doo, wash your hair doo doo doo do do da doo, wash your hair doo doo doo do do da doo wash you hair!

How to play: Choose your visuals for body parts. Substitute the body part every time you sing the verse and wash that body part that matches.

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When I Need to Poop

Materials: Social story/song lyrics

Tune: It Ain’t Me-Selena Gomez

Lyrics: When I need to poop, I poop in the toilet. When I need to poop I ask for help. Because poop goes in the toilet, poop goes in the toilet, when I need to poop, I poop in the toilet.

How to play: Sing through the verse, with the option to print out 2 copies of the song, cut out the pictures on one and put tape on them to match when singing.

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It’s Time for Bed

Materials: I don’t normally use anything besides the song itself but it could be helpful for some to have visuals or a social story to go along with actions in the song

Tune: I created an original melody but this song could be put to lots of familiar tunes like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” or “I’m a Little Teapot”

Lyrics: I’m feeling tired, it’s time for bed. “It’s bedtime now” that’s what (Mom/Dad/any caregiver) said. I’ll brush my teeth and go potty too, cuz when it’s bedtime I know what to do.  Go into my room and turn off the light, I’ll read a story and say goodnight.  When I’m in my bed my body is calm so I can sleep the whole night long.

Make it your own: Adapt the lyrics to the specific bedtime routine of your child and use language that is familiar and reinforcing to them.

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Cleaning up

Materials: Things to clean up!!

Tune: London Bridge is Falling Down

Lyrics: What do you want to clean up today, up today, up today? What do you want to clean up today? (Name) choose a toy.

OR: What do we need to clean up, clean up, clean up? What do we need to clean up, I see a _____________

How to play: Version 1–Depending on the situation, you can place two items in front of the child/student and sing through the verse letting them choose what they want to clean up. Version 2–You can sing continuously as you clean up, naming items as you put them away

*We always try to give two choices instead of just asking the open ended question “what do you want to clean up?” –we get told no a lot 😉

Social/Emotional Skills

I Know a Person

Materials: Optional pictures of friends, teachers, family members, etc

Tune: I Know a Chicken OR watch our version on our youtube channel 

Lyrics: I know a person (repeat), who could it be (repeat). I know a person (repeat), who could it be (repeat) Oh my goodness (repeat) Who could it be?

How to play: Sing or listen through each verse. At the end of the verse, identify a friend, etc. The song is over when the last person has been identified.

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Give a Compliment

Marerials: Cards with peer names on them or cards with prompts of different types of compliments

Tune: Down By the Bay

Lyrics: I like my friends, friends, friends. They’re really cool, cool, cool.  I hang out when them when I’m at school.  I tell them what I like about them.  It makes them happy when I give a compliment.

How to play: When I have used this in classroom I explain different types of compliments before activity-and write some prompts on a whiteboard to spark ideas.  I wrote the phrases “I like” “You are good at” and “I like your” door my students.  I go around room and have students randomly choose card of a peer out of a drum at the end of the song and then come up with a compliment for that peer.

Make it your own: This could be modified so cards chosen have specific compliments on them and student is able to choose who they want to say it to.

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Emotion Rhymes

Materials: Visuals of emotions, index cards with emotion riddles

Tune: Tiny Tim for verses, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star for rhymes

Lyrics: Feelings, feelings, feelings I have them all the time. Now see if you can guess this feeling with a rhyme.

Silly: When I have this feeling I wiggle all around. I laugh and smile and giggle til I fall to the ground.

Sad: When I have this feeling I sometimes start to cry.  My hand hangs down, I’m quiet, it can make me see, ehy

Happy: When I have this feeling there’s a smile upon my face. I’m doing things I like in my favorite place.

Scared: When I have this feeling my eyes get big and wide.  My body starts to tense up and I want to run and hide.

Mad: When I have this feeling I squint and stomp my feet. I sometimes yell loudly if I don’t get a treat.

How to play: Sing riddles and have client identify which emotion to represents by pointing to picture or come up with idea without a visual cue

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Who, What, Where do you See It?

Materials: WH- Question cube, and list of WH- Questions

Tune: 12-Bar Blues Song on our instagram

Lyrics: Who do you see? Who, who, who do you see? What do you see? What, what, what do you see? Where do you see it? Who, what, where do you see it?

How do play: Pass the cube back and forth and sing the song. Roll it when the verse is over and answer a question that correlates to the wh question rolled on the cube.

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Coping Skills

Materials: cards with examples of coping skills

Tune: I Know a Chicken

Lyrics: When I feel (angry, sad, silly, frustrated) I can (coping skill)

How to play: Sing through song and have client identify which coping skill they could use in that situation by choosing from cards

In the Community

Walking through The Grocery Store, What Do I See?

Materials: Food items, pictures of food, or pictures of items you’re planning to buy at the store

Tune: Walkin’ through the Jungle OR our original song here

Lyrics: Version 1: Walkin’ through the grocery store (repeat), What do I see? (repeat) I think I some carrots, Waiting for me! Version 2: Walkin’ through the grocery store, what do I see? I see carrots waiting for me. I took some carrots off of the shelf, and I put them in the cart

How to play: For this activity, depending on where you’re using it, you can make a grocery list with all of the items you’re going to buy. You can sing through the song in the order you want to buy the items, or you can take the song to the store and sing it there! Substitute grocery store for any of your regular hangouts and switch out the items!

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Walkin’ To the Mailbox

Materials: Envelopes, paper to write notes on, mailbox (or shoebox made into a mailbox!)

Tune: Over in the meadow

Lyrics: Walkin to the mailbox to pick up the mail, I reach inside to see what I can feel. A smooth envelope with a stamp to see. My name is on the front, I’m as happy as can be

How to play: everyone can take a turn “walking” to the mailbox to choose a letter each verse. Have fun by having students write a nice note to a classmate and write their name on the front of the envelope.

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Do you know the community worker?

Materials: Visuals of community workers

Tune: Do you Know the Muffin Man

Lyrics: Do you know the teacher, teacher, teacher? Do you know the teacher, who helps you learn? Modify for different workers and their roles.

How to play: Sing through song and have client identify correct community worker.  For younger kids I make two copies of the visuals and have them match visual.

Make it your own: This song could be modified to learn about family members, people at school, friends, therapists, or any other smaller communities.

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Down on the Corner in the Donut Shop

Materials: 5 donuts or pictures of donuts

Tune: Over in the Meadow

Lyrics: Down on the corner in the donut shop sat 5 little donuts with frosting on top. Along can ______ with money to pay. They bought a donut and ran away.

How to play: Take turns singing through the verse and using everyone’s name and giving them a chance to buy a donut. You can work on giving a larger bill and getting change back, or adding bills, or keep it simple and use just dollar bills!

Make it your own: switch up the name of the person, and substitute money for an actual number like $1.13

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Voice Volume

Materials: visuals of places in the community, pictures of places in the community, and visual with examples of voice volumes.

Tune: Buffalo Gals

Lyrics: Sometimes it’s ok to be loud, ok to be loud, ok to be loud. Sometimes it’s ok to be loud, where is it ok to be loud?  Sometimes my voice needs to be quiet, needs to be quiet, needs to be quiet.  Sometimes my voice needs to be quiet, where should my voice be quiet?

How to play: Sing through song and have client choose picture and identify location appropriate for loud or quiet

Make it your own: This activity works best when it is really personalized.  I have visuals of places I know my clients go regularly and this helps them transfer these skills to daily life.