April 13, 2024
A great body of New Zealand and international early years musical learning literature is focused on singing or instrumental play, within early years musical learning with less discussing the importance of sound play.
In this article, I will highlight the importance of sound play through sharing a six-month sound investigation within an infant and toddler ECE setting.
What is sound play and why is it important in early years learning contexts? Sound play experiences are where children have the opportunity to explore, investigate, and theorise about sounds. In ECE contexts, this can occur spontaneously in children’s play and through planned and intentional environment set ups. An example of spontaneous sound play could be children tapping on family play resources exploring the sound qualities of different materials such as metals, wooden objects and plastics. Planned and intentional sound play experiences will be discussed more in depth throughout the explanation of this sound investigation in the following sections. Both are valuable learning opportunities in ECE contexts as they support children’s growing understanding of the world around them.
We set out on this learning journey by introducing a new indoor soft sound environment that housed an array of open-ended natural sound-making resources such as pinecones, sticks, leaves, seeds, and shells.
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