Your Monster Mash!

Many of my clients just love working and playing on the computer.  As I've mentioned before, for these kids, I often incorporate computer fun into some of my music therapy activities within session.  It may be fun cognitive based games/activities, emotion/facial affect games/activities, social skill activities, or it may be work on the recording studio (which is accessed from my laptop). 

Someone shared with me this great link to an online Monster Mash photo activity (sponsored by Oriental Trader) that I wanted to share with you.  (http://www.monstermashup.com/)

You may have non goal-oriented fun with it by simply uploading fun family member pictures, and then watch as say, Dad, dances around in a silly monster mash dance.

Another option that I thought of was a goal-oriented approach.  If you have access to this (maybe pictures from field trips or pictures from last year's yearbook), download pictures of your child's peers/classmates into this little activity.  This would be a great way to help increase peer awareness and may help in decreasing mild social anxiety through use of peer pictures (and references) within a fun activity.  As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I find that first implementing these types of activities can go a long way in working on social skill/peer awareness activities with children who have anxiety related to peer socialization.  This is a way of "getting the toes wet" socially, and may be perceived as a little more 'safe' to a child with social anxiety.  See some of my other social skill/peer awareness blogs for further explanation.

See my family's monster mash - we got a kick out of it! We may do it again with a different theme/music.  There are lots of choices there including using pre set characters or uploading your own pictures.  Fun, fun!

Jessica