Services
Groups for Preschool Centres & Primary Schools
A music therapy program for childcares, long daycares, kindergartens and primary schools to support the development and wellbeing of young children. Within these settings, we are able to facilitate groups for all preschoolers (babies, toddlers and kindergarteners), and any primary school classrooms (Prep - Grade 6).
Individual Music
Therapy
We offer private music therapy sessions for children with disabilities between 0-8 years of age, with many families utilising their NDIS funding. These visits typically take place within the home, however there may be flexibility for us to visit your child at their childcare centre, kindergarten program or primary school classroom.
Professional Development
Our practitioners are available to share their knowledge of early childhood music therapy at workshops, seminars or conferences. As clinicians, we always seeks to impart practical strategies that educators, teachers and aides can readily draw upon. Furthermore, we offer supervision sessions for Registered Music Therapists early in their career.
Group Programs for Preschool Centres and Primary Schools
Our music therapy group programs involve live singing, an acoustic guitar, nursery rhymes, instrumental play, drumming, puppets, props, and much more! Each session is tailored to the needs of your centre, meaning that we can offer small groups or whole class programs.
Our group times are more than just a source of fun and creativity, as we will share techniques and activity ideas at the conclusion of each visit with educators. ‘Build It Up Music Therapy’ can also consult and offer advice on how to effectively and non-invasively engage children with disabilities, developmental delays and/or challenging behaviours. These reflections will then be summarised in a follow-up email with the staff.
When working in preschool centres, we are able to work across the age range - from babies and toddlers through to kindergarteners. We also facilitate groups for primary-aged students (Prep - Grade 6) within local mainstream schools as it’s important that children are well supported during these formative years.
Sessions typically take place on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis at your education setting. We are open to discussing how we can best implement a music therapy program in your place of learning based upon your budget and timetable.
To be cost efficient, we are available to facilitate multiple back-to-back group sessions during the space of a single visit. This means that we can split our time across several different age groups and rooms.
Individual Music Therapy
At ‘Build it Up Music Therapy’, we have a strong reputation for providing quality and engaging individual music therapy services for young children between 0 -8 years of age. The many preschool and primary school-aged students that we support in a 1:1 capacity have some form of a disability and/or delay, including (but not limited to):
Autism
ADHD
Down Syndrome
Global Developmental Delay
Cerebral Palsy
Intellectual Disabilities
Genetic Disorders
The choice of location for sessions will be heavily influenced by a range of factors, including the needs of your child and the level of NDIS funding available. However, we always seek to initially meet and work with families within the context of the home to establish rapport and goals. After this time, there may be the opportunity to support your child with their preschool centre or local primary school.
Throughout the course of our regular music therapy sessions, we will share and model strategies that effectively target and address the developmental goals important to your family. These methods will complement those used by other early intervention practitioners, such as speech pathologists and occupational therapists. Parents, and in some cases teachers, are then coached by our Registered Music Therapists on how to implement innovative ideas and techniques within everyday activities and tasks.
Professional Development
The director and owner of ‘Build It Up Music Therapy’, Joshua Birch, is a well-respected Registered Music Therapist within the early childhood education sector. As such, he is eager to share with others his experiences, strategies and insights on how music therapy can benefit the growth and wellbeing of children within preschool settings, particularly those who have disabilities, delays or challenging needs.
Joshua is able to facilitate a small workshop, lead a seminar, or present at a conference. He also has the availability and capacity to provided 1:1 supervision sessions with early career Registered Music Therapists.
Whilst working as a clinician, Josh has had the opportunity to participate in research, as well as share his knowledge at several public events:
2017
Josh shared the findings from his Master of Music Therapy thesis at the Australian Music Therapy Conference, in which he explored the role of music therapy in special education settings.
2020
At the 2020 World Congress of Music Therapy, Josh was invited to represent Australia as part of a virtual round table panel to discuss international music therapy practices in early childhood intervention.
2021
Josh represented Australia for an online presentation series that examined the impact of COVID-19 on early childhood music therapy practices across the globe.
2021
Josh was awarded a scholarship to commence a PhD in music therapy at the University of Melbourne. However, he soon realised that his true passion was working as a clinician and withdrew from his PhD study to establish his own private practice.
2023
Josh co-authored a peer-reviewed article with Dr Grace Thompson, entitled ‘Exploring Music Therapy Research in Preschool Settings that Include Children with Disabilities: A Scoping Review’, which was published in the prestigious international Journal of Music Therapy.
2024
Facilitated a series of workshops for the Preschool Field Officers (PSFOs) of Outer-Eastern Melbourne. Josh delivered practical, hands-on instruction so that he could effectively demonstrate key music therapy strategies that can be implemented within childcare settings and kindergarten programs.
2025
Josh was invited to speak at the ‘Uniting VicTas Kindergarten Inclusion Support (KIS) Professional Development Day’. During this presentation, Additional Assistants from different regions across Victoria heard Josh discuss music therapy techniques, songs and activities they could readily apply within their individual early learning settings.
