Children and Music

“Music moves, it travels in the air, in the wind, everywhere in the world, as far as the sun and the moon.” (Margherita 5 years)

The language of music is one of the “hundred languages of children”; born with them, it first takes shape in babbling and vocalisations, evolving with more and more complex exploration and research that makes use of intentional and non-intentional listenings to sound and music.

How can we begin from these things children know, and approach specific contents in the language of music without closing ourselves in laboratory experience or teaching musical instruments?

Using documentation in video and in images, pedagogistas, atelieristas and teachers will share research realised in municipal infant-toddler centres and preschools to shape a musical education with children as protagonists; with their potential for construction, their competency for investigation, for constructing hypotheses, and for organising materials – in this case sound – into compositional and communicative forms. During presentations on this research, there will be deeper discussion on the role of the adult, on exchanges of provisional theories between children, on everyday school contexts, on materials, and on documentation in the process of constructing knowledge between individuals and groups.