Stephanie Leavell, MT-BC
Stephanie Leavell is an award-winning songwriter, a music therapist, and the creator of Music for Kiddos, an online education company that provides high-quality music resources and continuing education for music therapists, music educators, and parents. Stephanie is a Berklee College of Music graduate and is passionate about using music to help kids succeed. She specializes in working with babies and kids through age 10.
Stephanie jokes that she has a low tolerance for cheesy music. She writes music to help kids be successful in their daily life: night-time routines, transitions, movement, instrument exploration, academic concepts, and helping kids understand and express their feelings.
Songs can be a powerful instructional tool. Music therapist Stephanie Leavell says she's written dozens of pandemic-themed songs for young children including "The Masked Moose" and "The Washing Walrus." She's been sharing them with music educators around the country. Leavell says she never sugar-coats her lyrics.
"Kids are so perceptive," she says, "They have the ability to understand their own emotions in the right environment, so I like creating songs that really acknowledge those real emotions and big emotions that kids have."
The song "School's a Little Different This Year," for example, "was just an opportunity to say, you know, all of these big things are happening, all of these big changes are happening, but it's going to be OK," Leavell explains.
-NPR, December 2021
Press
NPR
Culture: For kids grappling with the pandemic’s traumas, art classes can be an oasis
Washington Parent Magazine
Midwest Book Review
Storywraps
Enhance Life with Music Podcast
Idaho Press/ Boise Weekly
Made to Bloom: Boise Music Therapist releases second children’s album
Frontview Magazine
Kindie Rock Stars Podcast
Music Connection Magazine
Broadway World
Musical Health The Podcast
The Care Chronicles Podcast
“Feel the Feels:
While singer/songwriter Stephanie Leavell shows off sweet vocals on her new album, Made to Bloom, her tracks are anything but synthetically saccharine. Leavell is also a music therapist for kids, and her lyrics show it. Leavell’s work acknowledges that small children have big feelings and have not been spared the collective trauma of the pandemic. Her tracks “Grizzly Bear Grump,” “If You Need to Cry,” and “I Need a Break” not only recognize emotions such as frustration, anger, loneliness, but offer solutions to kids when they are experiencing those feelings: asking for a minute to calm down, crying, moving their bodies and feeling those feelings. The whole album is the perfect soundtrack for boosting social-emotional skills!”
~PDX Parent, 2023
