Emmy Award-winning composers, JP Rende and Kat Raio-Rende, have launched free resources for teachers and other childcare workers to accompany their groundbreaking children’s music album designed to help neurodiverse kids.
The album, Nothing Rhymes with Orange, is part of the couple’s project Aidee, named after its central character—an imaginative eight-year-old girl with ADHD who sees her neurodivergence as a strength rather than a limitation.
Through Aidee’s voice, the songs introduce practical “brain hacks” that encourage children to self-regulate, build routines, and celebrate their individuality. Educators can integrate the songs into circle time, life skills, or daily routines to provide children with accessible and engaging tools for emotional wellbeing.
And now to make things easier, JP and Kat have created free downloadable resources which teachers and people working in nurseries (kindergartens) and other childcare settings can use to help children to explore and understand their feelings.
Studies have shown music can benefit people with ADHD by providing a sense of calm and focus, helping with executive functions, regulating attention and boosting dopamine levels. For example, background music can help manage distractions, and rhythmic training can improve timing and impulse control. Music can also make routine tasks easier and even help with academic skills.
Nothing Rhymes with Orange, focuses on the following:
- Emotional regulation – helping children notice, name, and manage big feelings.
- Routine and organisation – with tracks like Anything Else and Put It Away, which encourage positive classroom habits.
- Mindfulness and breath work – introducing calming techniques that can be built into the school day.
- Confidence and resilience – reinforcing the message that every child is Learning More Every Day which is the name of the sixth track on the album.
Kat Raio-Rende explains: “Music can help transform how children feel about themselves and even how they think about learning and remembering things, so it often gets used in schools, kindergartens and other childcare settings.
“Our teachers and childcare providers do a vitally important job but we know they already work extremely hard and have a lot of preparation to do so we wanted to make life easier by providing some free downloadable resources which they can use alongside the music with a wide age range of children.”
The first two sheets, give children the opportunity to explore a specific feeling and what they are thinking about, either through words or pictures and so they will be useful to a wide age range of children.
The music album project was born from the couple’s personal experience of raising two children with ADHD. When a playful song they wrote inspired their daughter to put away her coat without being asked, they realised they had created something that could be of benefit in classrooms and childcare settings as well as in the home.
JP Rende said: “ADHD is so often seen as a deficit. We wanted to create music that shows the beauty and creativity it brings—something schools and kindergartens can use to support children in positive, practical ways and now made much easier with free resources which they can download and either print and hand out or share digitally.
The free resources can be found at www.aideehd.com/classroom-worksheets.
Nothing Rhymes with Orange is available on all major streaming platforms – Listen Here.
