Music Events Among Four-Year-Old Children in Naturalistic Contexts, within Selected New Zealand Kindergartens

The purpose of this study was to examine the current practices and ability of preschool children of New Zealand in musical events. Data was obtained on static, unmanned video cameras set up inside and outside the kindergarten building along with observational notes by the researcher during the dat collection. Video was analyzed for quantitative events under the areas of: sung speach, pitched phonation without words, sung chants, use of upper register (head voice), rhythmic speech, timbre play, and measure of highest note phonated during any minute of observation. As a result of the quantitative video analysis it became apparent that there were episodes of rich qualitative data that had been captured, and these were selected and described, taking one event from each kindergarten. Subjects were children enrolled and attending the eight kindergartens (n=331). They were alll aged four years, from 4 years 3 months to one day befor a fifth birthday. There was no data obtained about gender or ethnicity, but it is of note that 60% of four year old children in this area attended kindergarten, and three complete communities were included in the sample. Results include the discovery that, in these holistic settings, much music exploration was occuring. Much of the music making in the kindergarten was extra musical. Informal self-selected music making predominated and creative opportunities abounded. Pitch ranges exhibited by children did not reflect recommended ranges for pitch matching in the literature: their self selected singing range was more extensive, and consistently higher than the literature suggests. The role of teacher modeling, in use of singing and speaking voice, appeared to affect pitch choices and the accuracy of pitch matching of the children.