Interview with Melinda Chalfonte-Evans, Ph.D., CCC-SLP; Division of Speech Pathology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
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Linda Schreiber:I'm on the phone this morning with Melinda Chalfonte-Evans, who is at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. She's going to tell us about a clever and creative program called Music in My Mouth. Good morning, Melinda.Melinda:Good morning, Linda.Linda:I've heard that the Music
Linda Schreiber:I'm on the phone this morning with Melinda Chalfonte-Evans, who is at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. She's going to tell us about a clever and creative program called Music in My Mouth. Good morning, Melinda.Melinda:Good morning, Linda.
Linda:I've heard that the Music in My Mouth is a product that helps children with communication disorders but I know you can tell us more.
Melinda:I sure can. It's a CD of 26 original songs accompanied by a manual. The manual has suggestions for movements to accompany the songs, associated activities, related literature, and ideas for partnering with parents. The songs address a wide variety of concepts related to skills targeted by speech-language pathologists, including articulation, language, fluency, social skills, food aversion, concept development, self-control, and following routines.
Linda:So, it's a musical CD that speech-language pathologists would find useful. And are there also other audiences who would find it helpful?
Melinda:Our other target audiences are primarily families and early childhood educators. We are hoping that families will use the CD as a way of helping their child either learn new skills or practice some skills that their child had been working on in speech and language remediation. You know all parents these days are so busy. We felt that maybe if they had a tool like Music in My Mouththey could just pop the CD in the CD player on the way home from a speech-language session or when they're out running errandsit would give the child a chance to practice some speech and language skills in an easy and enjoyable way. We're also hoping that in early childhood settings, some of the educators or childcare providers will use it as a way to teach and develop essential skills in the early childhood population.
Linda:As a way to develop communication skills in all children. You said the songs are original. Are they sung by a speech-language pathologist?
Melinda:Actually, the songs were primarily written and all sung by David Kisor of Kisor Music. He's a very talented, creative musician here in Cincinnati. I wrote three of the songs, but David wrote the majority of them, and he performs them all on the CD.
Linda:How did this idea begin?
Melinda:The idea actually started collaboratively with Dr. Ann Kummer, who is our senior director here in the Division of Speech Pathology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. She had been talking with Children, Inc., which is an agency that provides childcare and early childhood education in Northern Kentucky. They had originally produced a product called Songs of Resilience to help children learn skills related to attachment, initiative, self-control, and mastery motivation. When we heard about their product, we decided we could develop a CD to target aspects of communication skills.
Linda:Can you give me an example of how you do thatcombine communication skills with music?
Melinda:We sat down and discussed with a number of the speech-language pathologists here in our division what skills they might like to see targeted in songs. Once we had gathered some ideas, for example for some articulation songs, we wrote the lyrics. L was one of the sounds that came up. So, David and I collaborated to write a song called "Licking Lollipops." The lyrics are: "Little Linda loves to lick her lollipop." The second stanza has "Little Larry loves to lick his lollipop" too. It provides opportunities for lots of L production practice. Randy the Orangutan helps us with R and Suzie the Snake teaches S and Z.
Linda:For what age range would you say the music and activities are appropriate?
Melinda:Most of the songs target the preschool to early childhood group. We do have a song called "Tip of My Tongue," which we designed to target some oral-motor awareness and movement. "When I say an L sound, where is the tip of my tongue? On the la la lid of my mouth." Or "When I say T, where is the tip of my tongue?" On the back of my ta ta teeth," and so on...
Linda:That sounds like a lot of fun. How has the response been to the music?
Melinda:Well, we've had really good response from a lot of the children and the speech-language pathologists who are using it.
Linda:You mentioned there's a manual that comes with the CD and it provides some suggested activities to do with the songs?
Melinda:Correct. I wrote the accompanying manual for the songs in conjunction with Tom Lottman from Children, Inc. Each of the songs has the lyrics printed in the manual and then suggestions for setting up the song. For example for "Food, It's Okay," the suggestion is to ask the children questions related to food, like "What's your favorite thing to eat?" or "What are some things you might have for breakfast or lunch or dinner?" We also included a dance or movement activity, where kids pantomime the movements along with the song. Associated activities like simple fingerplays or mouth play games are also included.
Linda:Are they ideas that would be very easy for parents to implement?
Melinda:Oh, yes. It's all very, very simple, and at the end of each section in the manual we've included suggestions for books they can read to go along with each song.
Linda:How many speech sounds have you addressed with the songs?
Melinda:We have a song for S and Z, a song for L, and a song for R; and then a couple of general oral-motor awareness songs.
Linda:And there is more information at this website: www.cincinnatichildrens.org/svc/alpha/s/speech/products/default.htm
If interested readers want to purchase Music in My Mouth, can they?
Melinda:Well, they can. The price is $39.95 and they can contact me here at the Cincinnati Children's Division of Speech Pathology: MELINDA.Chalfonte@cchmc.org
Linda:Melinda, we all know how much children love music. Teaching andearning about communication skills just got more fun with this CD. Best wishes with the next CD! Thanks for the interview.