🎃 Workshop Wednesday: A Halloween Treat with Piggyback Songs!

Looking for a fun and festive way to bring creativity into your music therapy sessions this Halloween? This week’s Workshop Wednesday features piggyback songwriting—a simple, engaging intervention that turns a familiar song into a brand-new musical experience!

🍬 What Is Piggyback Songwriting?

Piggyback songwriting involves taking the melody of a familiar song and creating new lyrics to fit that melody. Because the tune is already familiar, participants can focus on coming up with words, sharing ideas, and singing along without having to learn an entirely new song.

Piggyback songwriting can be adapted to support a variety of therapeutic goals, including communication, language development, social interaction, choice-making, creativity, and participation.

👻 This Week’s Activity: “I Like Halloween Treats!”

For this Halloween-inspired intervention, we’re borrowing the familiar song concept of “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow and making it all about our favorite Halloween treats!

🍭 The theme: What Halloween treats do we like to eat?

🍫 The activity: Invite participants to brainstorm their favorite Halloween candy and treats. Think chocolate bars, lollipops, gummy worms, candy corn, caramel apples, and anything else that makes Halloween sweet!

As a group, use participants’ ideas to create new lyrics that fit the familiar melody. You might sing about favorite treats, compare everyone's choices, or create a musical list of Halloween goodies.

The best part? There are no wrong answers! Everyone gets an opportunity to contribute in a way that works for them.

🎶 How to Facilitate the Intervention

1. Get into the Halloween spirit. Introduce the topic by asking participants about their favorite Halloween treats. Visual choices, pictures, or actual candy wrappers can help spark ideas.

2. Brainstorm together. Invite participants to name, point to, select, or otherwise communicate their preferred treats. Offer choices when additional support is helpful.

3. Create the lyrics. Use the group's responses to develop new lyrics inspired by the familiar melody. Keep the words simple and repetitive so participants can join in.

4. Sing and repeat! Perform the new song together. Leave pauses for participants to contribute their ideas, fill in missing words, or choose the next treat.

5. Make it your own. Add percussion instruments, movement, gestures, or opportunities for each participant to take a turn leading the group.

🎯 Potential Therapeutic Goals

Piggyback songwriting can be adapted to address goals such as:

• Communication: Expressing preferences and making choices.

• Language: Practicing vocabulary, naming, and word retrieval.

• Social interaction: Listening to others, taking turns, and sharing ideas.

• Cognitive skills: Recalling familiar songs, generating ideas, and attending to musical cues.

• Creativity: Contributing original words and ideas.

• Participation: Engaging in a shared musical experience.

As always, select goals based on each participant's individualized needs and document responses in relation to those goals.

🧡 Make It Accessible

Not everyone needs to sing an entire line to participate! Try offering picture cards, two-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank phrases, gestures, or assistive communication options. Participants can contribute by choosing a treat, playing an instrument, moving to the beat, or taking another meaningful role.

Remember to consider allergies, dietary restrictions, sensory preferences, and the needs of your group if you bring actual treats into the session. Some folks don't like or can't eat candy, so be sure to include other snack and treat options, like goldfish or chips!

🎃 Happy Halloween and happy songwriting!