Boom-a-Tunes Curriculum, Vol.1 CD

If you've never heard of boomwhackers before, you're in for a treat. These brightly colored musical tubes have won numerous awards, are a favorite of music educators around the world, are used by professional musicians and music therapists, and frankly, are simply a lot of fun to play with. Basically, boomwhackers are just colorful plastic tubes of varying lengths, ranging from a foot to several feet. They are roughly an inch and a half wide, so they fit right in your hands. Bang the tubes against a table, floor, or any stable surface, and these percussion tubes make all the notes imaginable. Bang them together for a unique blend of notes. Different tube sets are available to cover different scales, notes, and pitches. The tubes are perfect for teaching rhythm and notation, and can even help with teambuilding and supplement physical education. An enjoyable variety of teaching resources complement the tubes, which are geared for teachers with classrooms but could be a great help to parents who are teaching music right at home. All of these teaching aids help in using the tubes to reach national standards for music education. If you're looking for a fun and interactive way to introduce your child or student to notes, scales, rhythm, melody, harmony, and music, you can't get more exciting than boomwhackers. They'll be playing them for years to come, regardless of their age or experience with other instruments. ~ Rachel

This series by Ellen Foncannon is the foundation for teaching kids how to use Boomwhackers and getting the most educational value from them. Notation and musical concepts are taught in sequential order, with easy-to-use instructions for teachers to follow. Each volume comes with lesson plans, activities, scores, MENC standards, reproducible student visuals, lyrics, worksheets, and final reviews. Not much prep is needed for instructors; the curriculum offers organized and thorough directions. The lessons are designed for students to sing along as they or other students play the tubes. The songs that students play/sing have lyrics that also teach them additional music information. For example, in Volume One, students begin by learning each note's place on a staff, and the songs they play with the Boomwhackers have lyrics that help them remember note position as they play. Lyrics to one song go: "D is in a space (hey!) just below the staff (hey!)." A companion CD comes with each book and includes each song played in the book, complete with instrumental accompaniment. The student visuals and worksheets included with the lessons are reproducible and give students review and assessment on what they are learning from the songs. The final reviews cumulatively test all the musical concepts that have been taught in the featured volume. A page of tips helps teachers get the most out of each lesson and explain how to correctly play the Boomwhackers. This curriculum assures that while students learn key musical concepts, they also have a lot of fun and enjoy themselves. While there are recommended grade levels for each volume, older students who aren't familiar with musical concepts would probably enjoy the curriculum as well.