Christmas is over, but it’s not spring yet – so what do you do in sessions? We asked our therapists to share some of their favorite winter music therapy interventions.

Frosty the Snowman

Frosty doesn’t have to be only for December! Frosty the Snowman is fun to use throughout winter, encouraging clients to imitate the “thumpety-thump-thump” on a drum or act out Frosty’s antics in a movement intervention.

12 Days of Winter

Take the 12 Days of Christmas and turn it into a songwriting experience for winter! Ask your client or group to come up with 12 things they experience during the winter time and rewrite the Christmas carol to reflect their personal winter experiences.

Hot Chocolate

We can’t go a day in the office without hearing one of our therapists singing a song by Stephanie Leavell or Laurie Berkner! Hot Chocolate is a fun winter song that can be used to target self-regulation skills such as deep breathing, following directions to play shakers, and more. Take a listen and have fun incorporating this song into your practice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQP-yoGaNtU 

I Live Inside a Snowglobe

A Laurie Berkner Band original, this song is a fun imaginative song about what it would be like to live inside a snow globe. This song can be used with egg shakers, tambourines, maracas – anything that shakes! Our kiddos love to “shake it up”, “stomp it up”, and at the end fall down like snow. We love this one as a transition song to a story or sitting activity since it ends with everyone falling to the ground like snow. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcXC9ZzyBxo

Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?

Each winter, we bring back our Frozen rep and a few years ago some of our therapists began using this song as an intervention where clients get to build their own snowman! A portion of the song was rewritten and clients are asked to choose items to put on the snowman, targeting choice-making skills and cognitive skills to find where those items might go on a snowman’s body.

Do you wanna build a snowman?
Come on let’s go and play
Bundle up for the cold and play in the snow
Before it melts away

Three big circles for his body
A carrot for a nose
I wonder what goes on next?
Do you wanna build a snowman?
Put the [item] on the snowman!

We hope you have fun incorporating some of these fun winter music therapy songs into your practice, and let us know what you love to use this time of year with your clients!