This blog post is part of a series called "2025 Wrapped" where I share videos of my students celebrating their learning achievements across 2025.

Ok, I need to share the context of this moment captured just a couple of weeks ago. I'm always trying to come up with ways to teach the same concept from multiple perspectives, especially to young children. And of course, with that comes physical movement, and A LOT of colours. In short, I used my partner's Amazon Prime to rush-order these Boomwhackers the day before this lesson.

I've been teaching keyboards to 6-year-old Ruby since July this year, and she's flourished so much. Her learning journey has pushed me to create colourful animals to represent each letter of the musical alphabet (think Andy the Alligator, Barry the Bear, etc.) and they've done wonders for her retention. I knew the colour method would be good for her brain in particular because her playroom is COVERED in rainbow toys. So I decided to take a little break from keys in this lesson to ride home the idea that no matter what instrument you play, the pitches are the same, and the rules of notation stay the same too. It took Ruby a bit to understand that she had to 'wield' her Boomwhackers so she was prepared to respond to whatever colour appeared on our playalong video, but I think she was beginning to understand the principle by the end of it. I look forward to cementing the idea with her in her next lesson.

But get this: her 4-year-old brother Seb has never had a private music lesson before. I knew that bringing these Boomwhackers to Ruby's next lesson would entice Seb to join in with us. So by watching this video, you're witnessing Seb's first ever music lesson with me! And I think he's done an amazing job! I know it looks like he's just following colours, but before we started playing, we established very quickly that the smaller tubes have higher pitches and the longer ones have lower (and of course neither him or Ruby know this, but that was also a mini physics lesson!)

Buying a set of Boomwhackers has been in the back of my mind for a long time, but now that I've actually done it, I already know it's going to open a lot of doors for lessons with Ruby (and Seb if he's still interested!)

So here we go - this is Ruby and Seb, performing Jingle Bells on Boomwhackers with yours truly!

Bonus video: Jingle Bells using the same principle, performed on handbells by the cast of The Big Bang Theory.