Rhythmic skills in early childhood: A study with pre-school children in home settings

Teaching and learning rhythm are complex processes that involve fostering sensorimotor function and enhancing rhythmic literacy. This study investigated pre-school children’s ability to reproduce rhythms of increasing length and complexity using body percussion and instrumental drumming. It also explored the children’s ability to create self-invented notations for these rhythms and examined how these notations related to their graphic skills, as assessed through the draw-a-person (DAP) test. Participants ( n = 30) included fourteen nursery children (ages 2.6–4.7) and sixteen kindergarten children (ages 5.3–6.11). In 30 individual sessions conducted in each participant’s home, children reproduced three rhythms of increasing complexity, demonstrated by the researcher through hand-clapping and drumming. Participants then created notations for each rhythm and completed the DAP test. Key findings indicate significant age-related effects on rhythm reproduction, notation complexity and DAP depictions. Specifically, older children demonstrated a greater ability to reproduce complex rhythms and create more detailed notations. Additionally, children in both age groups showed improvement in rhythm reproduction following the researcher’s guidance and instructional interventions. The study combines rhythm reproduction, graphic and audio-graphic tasks to shed light on rhythm skills and emergent music literacy in early childhood music education.