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All About Me Experiences & Videos
"I Can Do Things" by Stephaine Leavell of Music for Kiddos. We love this song for the affirmations and moving lyrics to talk about trying something new.
"Go Big, Be Kind, Be You" by Nina West
This experience hits home for us. Fun fact: this song is what gave us the confidence to take our dream of becoming BenAnna Band into a reality. We are big supporters of encouraging emotional understanding with kiddos and introducing/developing ways of coping with those negative emotions. We start off this experience doing just that and offering some kid friendly ways to self care. "Go Big, Be Kind, Be You" is a great experience with which to start your school day or morning routine, to end the day before bedtime, to transition out of a session, or to end the school day due to the positive self love message with the lyrics. This is because musically the song has a gentle tempo and very melodic vocal part. Throughout the experience the lyrics are repeated three times and modulate to a higher key each time. This will be great to work on pitch recognition, auditory awareness and attention span. We love this song so much and we hope that your kiddos will fall in love with it too.
"FAMILY" by Laurie Berkner Band
We love this experience so much because there is a built in rhythm in the song of spelling our the word 'family' and the main message of this song is "I'm so glad you're in my family". This is a great experience to use during Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up in December. We touch on multiple developmental goal areas in this experience such as cognitive, language/ communication, gross motor and social emotional. By encouraging our kiddos to clap out a rhythm focusing on a specific word (i.e. 'family') we're working on memory recall, counting, sequencing, lyric anticipation, crossing the mediate, hand eye coordination, visual and auditory letter recognition while also being a self regulation tool due to the high gross motor impact and repetition to continue to make the student successful.
"I've Got So Much to Give" by Laurie Berkner Band
This experience has movements to follow along with, free movement time as well as a cool down bridge section. We love Laurie Berkner songs because she creates a roller coaster effect with so many of her songs that encourage attention span, focus and auditory awareness. This experience focuses on self esteem and self awareness of being a part of something bigger than themselves, which is obviously a larger concept to grasp for our kiddos. That doesn't mean we should start the conversation in smaller more approachable ways like "spreading our light", "use your strong kind voices to sing with me", and "being kind to others and ourselves". This song would be great to involved with a conversation about giving thanks around the holidays, graduation/transitional periods of self reflection and discussions about how we can help others.
This musical experience is an exercise in practicing positive self-reflexive language and regular affirmation. The lyrics in the chorus repeat: “I can be sunshine ‘cause I am warmth to all my friends/I can work hard for what I’m working towards ‘cause I’m loyal to the end/ I am strong, there is strength in who I am/ And who I am when I’m shining bright is who I’ll be again/ I can choose what I want to be today and tomorrow I’ll choose again.” The lyrics in the chorus and throughout the song emphasize the importance of practicing self-kindness (both as children and as grown-ups). This socio-emotional skill is beneficial to both individual development throughout early childhood and to a child’s wider social experience. Coupled with the reassurance that we can choose what language we use with ourselves, we hope this song provides a means to help the children in your life see themselves in a positive light and regard themselves with compassion, disregarding rigid ideas of who or what they “should be” on a daily basis in favor of genuine emotional well-being. This musical moment is also an opportunity to engage in gross motor play, highlighting words like “Sunshine” with extended arms in a “sunshine” pose and “Strength” by flexing muscles, pantomiming “strong arms” to symbolize the value of inner strength. We also invite listeners to sing along with the verse using neutral syllables “Doo-Doo-Doo” and engaging vocally throughout the song.
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