The “Serious Business” of Musical Play in the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum

Te Whāriki: A Holistic and Interwoven Approach to Learning in Early Childhood

Early childhood education in New Zealand caters to children aged birth to five years and is guided by the curriculum document, Te Whaˉriki. ¹¹ This is a bicultural statement that acknowledges Maˉori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and is “a localised instance of a globalised inclination toward acknowledging indigenous and personal experiences.” ¹² It is considered to be a visionary curriculum that has influenced international curriculum development. ¹³ The holistic and integrated nature of the document is represented in its title, Te Whaˉriki (woven mat), a metaphor for the weaving together of “intricate patterns of linked experiences and meaning rather than emphasising the acquisition of discreet skills.” ¹⁴

Te Whaˉriki places a strong emphasis on the critical role of sociocultural factors and their effects on “culturally mediated learning and of reciprocal and responsive relationships for children with people, places and things.” ¹⁵ A sociocultural lens takes into account diverse contexts and multiple perspectives of young children and their learning rather than measuring a child’s development against a set of criteria that are constructed to be a “norm.” ¹⁶ Te Whaˉriki is presented as a holistic framework in which key principles, strands, and goals are interwoven rather than in a subject-specific format. The following four foundation principles are at the center of the curriculum: ¹⁷

The principle of empowerment works in cohort with the other principles to provide a strong Maˉori focus. Interwoven through the principles in Te Whaˉriki ¹⁸ are five strands, each with its own goals:

Te Whaˉriki, in contrast to other early childhood curricula, is oriented toward attitudinal and dispositional thinking rather than subject knowledge. ¹⁹ This is not to say that the importance of building understandings about music is not acknowledged. Rather, it is implicitly woven through the document. Music is considered to be the warp and weft of the curriculum strands—well-being, belonging, contribution, exploration, and communication. ²⁰ Te Whaˉriki advocates for opportunities where children “experience an environment where they are affirmed as individuals,” ²¹ such as in the context of musical play.

Musical Play

Musical play is not exclusive to early childhood settings and may be interpreted in different ways and different contexts. Music gives children a mode of expression that enables them to communicate with others in meaningful and powerful ways, both verbally and nonverbally. This allows children to explore different ways of being creative and expressive, an important communication goal identified in Te Whaˉriki. ²² Through play, children explore sounds through singing, playing, and moving, individually or in self-selected groups. Musical play is usually spontaneous and self-directed, with no predetermined response imposed by others, and is considered to be a “socially mediated process.” ²³ The tactile, visual, and auditory nature of musical play involves both mind and body and fosters expressiveness, imagination, enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation. ²⁴

By empowering children to make choices about what and how they play with sound, they become active agents in their own music learning. It is through musical play that children discover elements of music and begin to develop understandings about how sound can be altered to create effects. Children explore sounds through their voices, bodies, and a range of sound sources and interactions with others and the environment. For example, children may use different strikers on a box or a plastic container to produce different tone colors and dynamics.

In contrast, in a “traditional” music education context, children learn through involvement in teacher-initiated activities, or “ritual,” rather than free exploration or guided musical play. ²⁵ Although early formal music “training” seems to promote rapid achievement of certain milestones, the benefits of musical play in a child’s early years should not be underestimated, and neither should it be at the expense of social dimensions of improvised music-making. ²⁶ Musical play is not an alternative to more formal instruction but is regarded as a valued way of learning about music through exploration and experimentation. ²⁷ All music methodologies and approaches have scope to incorporate aspects of play. For example, in the context of Orff-Schulwerk, a recognized approach to music education, children have opportunities to improvise and explore rhythms and melodies on tuned percussion instruments.

Children’s Curiosity about Sound

Young children are frequently motivated by a strong, insatiable curiosity about sound, a phenomenon that has been of interest to teachers, researchers, and others for many years. ²⁸ Children make sense of sound by progressing through a hierarchy of increasing complexity, aided by experience and familiarity. The more music children hear, the more likely they are to explore the elements of music, which will lead to deeper understanding about how sound is made and manipulated. ²⁹

Experimentation with sound produces what may be perceived as noise, even chaos, but this may be the beginning of a child’s meaningful music-making. One scenario could be a child banging on an iron fence. An adult who “notices, recognizes, and responds” could imitate the child’s patterns, play the pattern faster or slower, and encourage the child to develop the rhythmic ideas further or explore strikers and surfaces. Acknowledgment of the value of sound exploration provides fertile ground for initiating musical conversations between adult and child. ³⁰ Through these conversations, children discover how sound is made as they interweave the elements of music into their play. ³¹ Random sounds may be shaped into patterns and structures as young children become more experienced with improvisation. As they compose and invent, children “draw on the resources of their musical environments to create original musical works as part of their ongoing play, exploration and learning.” ³²

A Rich Music Environment

The environment is not a neutral space. It influences a child’s sense of well-being, belonging, contribution, communication, and exploration, the five key strands of Te Whaˉriki, ³³ and reflects the culture and philosophy of a particular center. The environment mirrors “the ideas, values, attitudes, and cultures of the people who live there.” ³⁴ Te Whaˉriki draws on a range of philosophical influences such as Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Reggio Emilia and allows early childhood centers to personalize their learning environments and “weave their own mats” of learning. The strong influence of environment on learning is exemplified in the pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, in which the phrase “the environment as the third teacher” is central. ³⁵ From a Reggio Emilia perspective, teachers create environments that are conducive to musical play, ensuring that music “always remains accessible and an important expressive ‘language’ for young children.” ³⁶

Accessibility to music learning opportunities can be enhanced or constrained by a range of environmental factors such as physical space, noise levels, available materials, and the potential for collaborative musical play with others. ³⁷ By fashioning the physical environment to provoke musical play, children “construct their own knowledge by trying to make sense out of whatever is around them, and they develop skills by manipulating what they find interesting.” ³⁸

It is important for children to have opportunities to play with a range of sound-making materials and simple instruments that are visible and accessible. ³⁹ Sound sources could include natural environmental materials (e.g., stones, shells, and driftwood), everyday objects (e.g., buckets and boxes), and conventional percussion instruments. Ethnic instruments will add interest and acknowledge diversity. Children should also have opportunities to explore ways of making and changing sound on keyboards, microphones, and electronic and digital recording devices. The important factor is that music stimuli are in abundance in the child’s environment to increase chances to spark interest. A variety of sound sources is crucial for children to explore timbres and different ways of making sound. The teacher plays a critical role in responding to the child’s interest to maximize learning possibilities, capturing the notion of “socially and culturally mediated learning and reciprocal and responsive relationships for children with people, places and things”—a key aspiration identified in Te Whaˉriki. ⁴⁰

Effective Teacher Guidance

It is important that the teacher take on the role of “environment setter” as well as imparter of knowledge. ⁴¹ This co-constructivist approach to learning and teaching is fostered in Te Whaˉriki, ⁴² allowing children to find out for themselves, giving them “voice and choice” in the learning process. ⁴² “Trying things out, exploration, and curiosity” are important and valued ways of learning identified in Te Whaˉriki. ⁴³ This involves the teacher “noticing, recognising and responding to a child’s interest arising from musical play.” ⁴⁴ Without this conscious awareness, learning and teaching opportunities may be overlooked or misinterpreted. The challenge for confident teachers is to wait for an invitation from children and “refrain from directing, explaining or demonstrating.” ⁴⁵

Noticing a child’s interest in a particular sound is not difficult. Recognizing what the interest is and responding to it is more challenging. Reactions to a child banging on a saucepan could range from “I wish he’d stop that horrible noise” to a level of toleration to the idea that “this could be a young composer in the making.” As Kenney ⁴⁶ describes, “composers use sound rather than paint to express their ideas and generally the sound exploration of the young composer is labelled ‘noise.’” The “chaos” of the exploration phase of musical play is likened to the processes of mark-making preceding the drawing of recognizable shapes, walking eventually leading to skipping, and babbling eventually becoming speech. ⁴⁷

If teachers are to adopt a play-based, child-centered approach to learning, it is important for them to interact with children to assess interests and ascertain new directions for learning. It is the teacher’s role to encourage children to explore contrasts in sound by inviting them to play sounds in different ways and ensure that an initial musical impulse is supported. If a child shows an interest in the sound produced by rubbing stones together, the teacher may respond by joining in or asking questions such as “If you stretch out your fingers while you are rubbing your stones, can you hear the sound go higher?” Through teachers’ responses, children should know that sound-making is valued. It is the adult’s affirmation of a child’s musical behavior that helps to build a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. ⁴⁸ This is the ideal. However, teachers are responsible for integrating subject knowledge with interactions building on children’s interests and understandings. ⁴⁹ To do this, teachers need both music knowledge and pedagogical knowledge as well as confidence and initiative to capture the learning moment.

There is a tendency for teachers to regard musical knowledge as that which has been acquired through formal music education settings. This creates an all-or-nothing situation, which we believe perpetuates teachers’ lack of confidence and self-belief in their ability to respond to children’s musical interests. An in-depth knowledge of music will naturally give teachers more choices, but the recognition of contrasts in sound such as pitch, dynamics, tempo, and rhythm is not exclusive to those who have been privileged by formal music education. The depth of knowledge of musical terminology and underlying concepts could be regarded as being on a continuum, rather than as a “have or have not” situation. Regardless of starting points, there is a need for supporting resources and ongoing professional development to enable teachers to broaden their knowledge of musical possibilities. ⁵⁰ This may help reduce teachers’ anxiety and encourage them to be more resourceful and intuitive as they interact with children through music.

Threads of Musical Play

The creation of a sonic trail is an example of encapsulating the threads discussed in this article—the child’s natural curiosity about sound, a rich musical environment, and effective teacher guidance. A sonic trail is a pathway of sounds that enables children to experience a “hands-on” exploration of a range of different sound sources arranged throughout the learning and teaching environment. Sounds may be grouped according to type—for example, there could be stringed instruments, plastic containers, electronic sounds, and natural environmental sounds. Children should have time and opportunity to explore and improvise with sounds using hands, strikers, and other objects. As a starting point, a sonic trail can be adapted to suit the needs, interests, and ages of children from a range of different contexts. Older students for example could explore music elements in more depth by digitally recording acoustic sounds and manipulating these to create particular effects. Musical play is not exclusive to young children.

Building Learning Capacity

Musical play can “amuse, delight, comfort, illuminate, inform and excite” young children ⁵¹ and allows them to be creative and expressive in spaces where they make choices. It is important that children’s natural interest in sound is nurtured. Too soon, they are in a school environment where they are usually “immersed in mechanics and structure without sufficient attention paid to play and exploration.” ⁵² While this statement could be considered to be overgeneralized, music educators are likely to concur that a strong foundation of understanding and fascination about how sound is produced could set the stage for future musical pursuits.

The multiple roles played by the early childhood teacher are vital in ensuring that learning possibilities are maximized. Early childhood teachers have “working theories” about music—ideas relating to the value and purpose of music for young children, beliefs about how children learn, and ways of presenting and structuring the learning environment. ⁵³ The establishment of a physical environment that is conducive to musical play is a useful starting point but is simply that—just a starting point. Noticing learning possibilities arising from musical play requires alertness, recognizing what is happening requires content knowledge, and responding to a child’s needs and interests requires creativity and resourcefulness. In this way, children become involved in the planning process. ⁵⁴ When all the benefits of a nurturing and interactive musical play environment are taken into consideration, there is little to lose and much to gain.

The notion of building capacity for learning and the close connection between learner and learner environment is central but not exclusive to the goals and aspirations of Te Whaˉriki. ⁵⁵ The thoughts shared in this article relating to musical play and Te Whaˉriki ⁵⁶ are philosophically rather than methodologically based and intended to provoke teachers’ critical reflection on their own practices and beliefs.

Teachers’ feelings of inadequacy should not prevent children from having opportunities to be music-makers: “Children are refreshingly creative when given the chance.”⁵⁷ Children need time, space, materials, and encouragement. With commitment, passion, and careful planning, opportunities for musical play will help children realize their musical potential and lay a strong foundation for developing their musical identity. It is only through change that abstract ideals become reality. In this way, musical play will be regarded as serious business for young children.