ABSTRACT
Musical activity in early years settings may often be adult-led, with welcome songs, counting and movement games all providing opportunities for group and individual involvement. However there are other occasions on which children may explore their own original musical ideas: observation of these can reveal evidence of musical creative thinking, ranging from playful vocal experimentation with nonsense sounds and chants to exploration of percussion and other instruments, and to attempts to represent musical sounds with invented notation. This chapter begins with an account of some authors’ attempts to model and classify musical development and cognition. Having outlined the kinds of musical activity and behaviour that may be observed and studied, two research methods are discussed which seem to show evidence of children’s musical thinking: (1) the analysis and discussion of children’s invented notations and (2) observation in which the researcher can take a participant role.
