Jill Ferris

Mindful hands, gestures as language: listening to children

This paper explores ideas of language as a cognitive tool and the role of gesture in expressing childrens interests and levels of knowledge. The context is a group of three‐year‐old children who participate in a weekly music session with a trained musician. The authors present drawings from photographs of childrens hands and interpret them, using contextual information, to explain how the positioning of the childrens hands reflects their internalized understandings and can be viewed as a rich symbolic language. A discussion of the early childhood curriculum and the use of finger plays has been included to suggest that gesture was initially viewed as part of ‘the whole child’ but, today, activities like finger plays have become ritualized exercises. It is suggested that if adults do not listen to the language of hands they are depriving themselves of a valuable window into childrens thinking and learning.

Pre-school children's encounters with The Magic Flute

Abstract This article describes a music programme in an Australian early learning centre. Through a repertoire of songs, games and instruments, the children were introduced to music forms, including opera. Mozarts Magic Flute was presented to these children by watching the Metropolitan Operas latest film performance. Because this opera seized the childrens imagination, their interest was scaffolded for eight weeks. This musical adventure was recorded through naturalistic observations, including videos, photographs and drawings with the childrens own responses a focus of this event. The experiences of one child, Ruby, are used here as an example of childrens potential when the adult world engages them in intelligent dialogue.