Repertoire Refresh: Meet Caspar Babypants
When many of your clients are small children, it can be hard to keep your repertoire fresh. What do you do if a client is tired of “Old MacDonald” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”? What can you as the therapist do if you need or want a break from classic children’s songs? In this post, I’d like to share a little bit about one of my all-time-favorite but little-known children’s artists, Caspar Babypants.
The Seattle-based musician (formally known as Chris Ballew) used to be lead singer of the alternative rock group Presidents of the United States of America. After being nominated for two Grammys, Ballew turned to children’s music under the silly stage name Caspar Babypants.
Many of Caspar’s songs transfer easily to helping clients achieve music therapy goals in individual sessions or groups. One of Caspar’s most popular songs is “Run, Baby, Run.” This song can be used to exercise one-step direction following and sustained attention by requiring clients to act out the movements in the lyrics (run, jump, swing, etc.). If the client needs sensory regulation, the music therapist could choose movements that provide alerting, organizing, or calming sensory stimuli. The simple language in the song lends itself well to children with low receptive language skills, and the client’s name could replace the word “baby.”. Additionally, instructions embedded in musical stimuli can be easier to process for children with autism spectrum disorder than spoken directions due to abnormal functioning in the left side of the brain.
One of the biggest hits from Caspar’s newest album, Flying High, is “Ants Can’t Dance,” a musical story about the first ant who learned to dance. This song can be used to work on sustained attention and/or impulse control in a group session when each child waits their turn to attach a visual to a storyboard. In an individual session, children can demonstrate sustained attention by matching a picture of each character to a storyboard.
Many of Caspar’s songs lend themselves naturally to working on speech goals. Caspar often uses alliterations such as“More Moles,” “Drowsy Dopey Dozy Dog,” and “Jellyfish Jones.” These songs provide opportunities for clients to fill in blanks of CVC words (such as dog) or blend words (such as drowsy). Practicing tongue twisters like “drowsy dopey dozy dog” can be especially useful for children who have mastered CVC sounds but have trouble generalizing to longer words or phrases.
“Everything Has a Song” also provides many opportunities to practice speech sounds listed in the client’s goals. For example, clients working on producing /b/ can sing about cars that go “beep” or bees that go “buzz.” This song could also be used for children with auditory sensitivity to desensitize them and let them know when to expect loud noises such as fire alarms, horns, and hand dryers. When helping clients develop auditory discrimination, music therapists can ask clients identify what sounds are loud, soft, high, low, etc.
I hope this post inspires you to add some Caspar Babypants songs to your repertoire! Let us know what little-known children’s songs are your favorites.
-Molly, Music Therapy Intern
