Winter is here and for some, it will be here for a while. On this blog post, we are sharing with you some of our favorite winter music activities, resources and ideas for preschool and kindergarten music time.

You’ll find activities, finger plays, books, visuals, and other ideas to help you plan you preschool and kindergarten music classes during the winter months.

I'm going to walk you through a preschool and kindergarten music monthly lesson plan and what I do to introduce it gradually over the course of a month; I'm going to give you a timeline for a lesson plan, assuming that you see your classes or your students once a week.

If you have regularly listened to the Music for Kiddos Podcast, if you read this blog or if you follow me on Instagram, you may already know that I have this tendency of “overdoing it.”

I am a super ambitious person, probably to a fault. And, I just have a tendency to overwork. I think a lot of it is out of this sense of trying to prove myself to myself. Or maybe, I'm trying to prove myself to other people a little bit (but I think most of it is just myself).

I want to show myself I can do things and that has led to a series of burnout cycles, maybe you can relate to this, too?

Winter is here… and so are some of our favorite winter songs for kids!

We can often be so hard on ourselves and second-guess whether or not recognition is deserved. If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook or regularly listen to the Music For Kiddos Podcast, I often talk about and encourage my friends and the people around me to engage in self care. This time, I am taking my own advice and I am engaging in self-care.

Virtual school? In-person? Hybrid? Homeschool? Pod? School has definitely not been the same since March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. I guess I am not the only one who thought that things would get back to “normal” (what is normal, anyway?) at the in 2021, or at least, at the beginning of this new school year.

On episode 46 of the Music For Kiddos Podcast, I get to talk to my sister-in-law Kerry Leavell, LCPC, MT-BC, who is a huge part of who I am as a music therapist.

We talk about authenticity and what it means to be authentic in the music spaces we share with children and what it means to be authentically yourself while preserving your energy and well-being by not always giving it your all. Because after all, you can’t do everything.

I was inspired to write a series of songs that I could share with everyone who works, parents, and loves children that would support kids in feeling validated and express the array of emotions that they might be experiencing and that surfaced as the result of their changing environment and circumstances.

These songs are compiled in my newest release “I Need A Break: Expressive Songs For Kids.”

On this week’s episode of the Music For Kiddos Podcast, we are sensory seekers as part of this mini-series about sensory processing in music spaces and how we can support children who are sensory seekers as music therapists or music educators.

On this week’s episode of the Music For Kiddos Podcast, we are diving deeper into what it means for children to be sensory avoiders. We also talk about how, as music therapists and as music educators, we can take a sensory based approach and learn how their sensory systems are impacted by music.