Physical
Items required: table-top keyboard and xylophone, a piano if a keyboard is not available.
If a table-top keyboard is available, gather your participants around the table. If there is no keyboard, gather your group around the piano. Place the xylophone on a table.
Greet each of the participants by name, look them in the eye and touch their hands when you speak to them.
One at a time, take participants to the piano and encourage them to play the keys or at least touch them. Also, provide playing sticks for the xylophone and encourage a second participant to explore the different bars by tapping them with the sticks. Give each participant the opportunity to explore both the piano and the xylophone. If they do not wish to hold the playing sticks, encourage participants to feel the xylophone bars with their fingers. Perhaps you could pick out the familiar Chopsticks or Heart and Soul on the piano. If participants place their hands on the piano body, they may feel the vibrations when it is played.
Cognitive
Items required: old song books, song books from Elder Song, older familiar hymnals; enough books so everyone can have one.
Gather your participants around the table. Greet each one by name, eye, and touch.
Present the song books and share just a little about them. Maybe that you have an old green hymnal from a Lutheran church or you have a song book printed in 1947 with many old familiar songs. Encourage participants to open their books and look at the song titles. Read some aloud.
You might see a spark of recognition at a particular title. If so, sing that song; first verse and chorus or just the chorus; sing it through two or three times. Move on to more titles. When you come to a song that is familiar to you, stop there and sing a verse and chorus. Anytime a participant displays song recognition, encourage participation, sing the chorus over several times. Look again at the books. Ask participants to choose a song they like or ask them to turn to a particular page (if, for example, they all have a copy of Elder Song) or to choose a page.