Janna's Favorites 2025
Amazon Prime Days are July 8-10, 2025!
Here is a quick compilation of items that I have particularly enjoyed in my studio in the past year. Let me know in the comments what your 2025 favorites have been!
Check out my 2024 list at this link, and my 2023 list at this link too.
Favorite “office supplies” and teaching tools:
BIRTHDAY NECKLACE - One of my former piano families has a tradition of wearing a hat at a meal on your birthday, and I thought that tradition was so fun. But I didn’t think a hat was a sanitary idea for students to all wear on their heads.
Enter: the birthday necklace! Everyone in the studio has to wear it while I play Happy Birthday as my gift to them at the lesson closest to their birthday.
Warning: If you purchase this necklace for similar use, please note that you will receive mixed reviews. Some students love the birthday necklace. Others endure it for 60 seconds. 😂
LOLLIPOP DRUM — Thanks to my friend, Christina Whitlock, I learned of the lollipop drum and all of its potential uses. One of my young students declared it “her favorite instrument in the whole world.” It is pretty fun!
I own the 10-inch version and would recommend that for sound quality.
J.R. WATKINS *FOAMING* HAND SOAP REFILL — In last year’s favorites list, I posted the gel hand soal refill that I’ve been getting through Amazon Subscribe and Save. (My students are all required to wash their hands when they enter the studio, which means I go through a lot of liquid soap.) However, I recently learned that there’s a foaming version of this same soap and scent, and I think it’s ultimately more economical.
I’m not a huge fan of foaming soaps, but this one works well and doesn’t have an irritating “fake” fragrance.
Music books my students and I have enjoyed this year:
NEW KABALEVSKY “SELECTED PIANO PIECES” EDITIONS — Kabalevsky is, hands down, one of my favorite composers. He wrote so well for students, and his pieces are just quirky enough to suit my taste. I was thrilled to see these three new collections of selected pieces in the Schirmer Performance Editions done by Hal Leonard.
These books feature well-known favorites as well as lesser-known selections, and they also have quite a bit of introductory material including historical information and practice tips for each piece. Order the individual books here:
Want some support in teaching Kabalevsky? One of my recent teacher workshops within the Patreon membership featured an overview of his pieces for students. Check out the replay here.
Mozart: Selected Intermediate to Early Advanced Piano Sonata Movements (Alfred Masterwork Edition) edited by Maurice Hinson — I didn’t know that this book existed until a student of mine worked on K.570 this year. I was looking for an inexpensive, yet high-quality edition — while I love for my early-advanced students to buy whole volumes of sonatas, this student didn’t need a large urtext volume of Mozart.
Hinson is one of my favorite editors for student editions, and this book contains most of the movements that I’ve taught to pre-college students in my years of teaching.
(I did make a video featuring the first movement of K.570 this year!)
Alfred Simply Classics Solos arranged by Willard Palmer, Allan Small, and more — while this is not the only source I use for arrangements of “the classics,” I have enjoyed using these this year in my studio.
One of my 11-year-old students is currently obsessed with playing Mozart and Beethoven, but since he’s only at an early intermediate level, this has been a great solution for him. His mom texted me the day he took home the Theme from Sonata in C Major, K. 545, that “he was VERY excited about the new Mozart piece - he gazed at it for the entire car ride home.” 😆
(He had already learned the Sonata Pathetique theme, pictured here.)
Browse the entire collection on Alfred’s website here.
I included several of these arrangements on my newest resource, Not Ready Yet, along with several arrangements from other composers and publishers. Check it out here!
THE PHILIP KEVEREN SERIES — I generally prefer to teach “popular” songs using chord charts and lead sheets. However, I currently have one teen student who enjoys reading arrangements. (When I asked her what she had enjoyed most this school year, her response was “playing songs that have words.” )
Since that is such a general category (!), and since I know Philip Keveren is such a good arranger, we spent some serious time going through his catalog online. This year, she used Soothing Piano Worship - one of his newest books. These are very nice arrangements of tunes that are popular now (or have been recently). While it’s labeled “Piano Solo” level, these arrangements aren’t terribly complex - I would level them mid-intermediate.
After browsing the Hal Leonard website, I looked on my public library catalog - yes, you read that right! - and checked out everything they had in the Philip Keveren series to show other students and see if there was something they might enjoy for the summer. The books that students seemed to instantly gravitate towards were:
Disney Songs for Classical Piano (Piano Solo) - I am not sure how I feel about this one - Keveren took standard classical pieces and mashed them up with Disney tunes! I kind of love them and kind of also cringe….)
A few of my students went home for the summer with these books to try on their own. I can report back in the fall on how they did if anyone is interested!
Pedagogy and personal development books:
💰 Be sure to click the 20% off coupon today for the best price I’ve seen on this book! 💰
PROFESSIONAL PIANO TEACHING, VOLUME 2 by Jeanine Jacobson — This book was featured on my 2023 list because I frequently recommend it to consultation clients.
But this year I’m featuring it again because it’s the textbook for a fall Intermediate Piano Teaching Cohort that I’m excited to host online with my dear friend Christina Whitlock. This 10-week study, starting September 5, is your chance to find a clear path forward — alongside a brilliant community of fellow teachers. Together, we’ll unpack the core principles of intermediate piano teaching so you can grow in confidence and support your students more effectively.
➡️ Enroll here - early bird pricing ends August 15!
(Not directly piano-related!)
DARE TO LEAD: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown — I first read this book a few years ago and could not stop making connections between Brown’s arguments and what it takes to lead an independent music studio. This book was one of the resources that inspired me to write an entire presentation on the unexpected (and often paradoxical) role of leadership that teachers must be willing to accept.
I’ll be presenting this presentation twice in the next few months:
online as a workshop for my Patreon Partners on Friday, August 29, at 11:00 am central time
in person as a session at the OhioMTA Conference on Friday, September 26, and 27 at Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Van Wert, Ohio
I’d love to see you at one of those events!
(Not really piano-related at all!)
THE COST OF CONTROL: Why We Crave It, the Anxiety It Gives Us, and the Real Power God Promises by Sharon Hodde Miller — This is an explicitly Christian book, which I found to be an excellent cultural commentary and quite convicting for myself. (I had a youth pastor when I was in middle school who would jokingly repeat the refrain, "I just gotta get control of this control thing.”
Miller separates the book into four sections: WHY we control, HOW we control, WHAT it costs us, and the REAL power God promises us.
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