<p> Miss Gabby’s Class </p><p>Parent handout: Songs, Dancing and Music Therapy</p><p>In the classroom I use music as a way to teach the students. Music is a big motivator to many students and it makes learning fun and easy to remember. For each theme, I have songs that correspond to the theme either talking about animals, counting, rhyming, etc. While listening to the songs, we encourage all students to participate by singing, clapping along or imitating finger plays. Finger plays are fine motor (hand) movements that correspond to the song. For example the itsy bitsy spider has the finger play of making a spider by putting both hands together, making a sun by reaching above your head and having your hands come together, the rain is made by moving your fingers from top to bottom. All the songs we sing in the classroom have corresponding movements to them. Imitating the finger plays allows the students to work on attending skills, imitation skills and fine motor (small muscles) and gross motor skills (large muscles).</p><p>We also use a music therapy program in the classroom called, “Tuned Into Learning”. Music Therapy was developed to teach concept and skills to music. All of our music therapy songs have visual and pictures that correspond to the music. </p><p>Some topics that we cover using music therapy include:  Answering questions (Who, what, where, when)  Language (Big and Small, Gender, Community helpers, functions, prepositions, Body Parts, same and different, actions)  Social Skills (Greetings, Names, taking turns, requesting breaks, emotions)  Pre-Academics (shapes, colors, letters, counting, letter sounds, numbers, imitation, following directions)  Self help skills (washing hands, using a tissue) </p>