Blogs
October 09, 2025
Acoustic Worlds: Reframing Sound as Aesthetic and Relational Language
with support from ECPN leadership team – Adrianne Bacelar de Castro & Kathleen Kummen
A group of infants play in a large outdoor play space. A child reaches into a bin of wooden tree blocks and pulls one out. He examines it, turning it left, then right, and carries it over to one of the square metal posts that hold up the roof of the outdoor shelter. Holding the tree block in one hand, he smacks it against the post, hard, creating a loud, hollow, sonorous sound: BONG, BONG, BONG. The child pauses, his arm raised slightly above his shoulder, and tips his head to one side. The metallic ringing echoes and lingers in the air, like a gong. When the sound vibrations have faded to almost nothing, the child once more brings his arm down and hits the wooden block against the post—BONG, BONG, BONG—then pauses. Again, the metallic ringing sings out and slowly fades. This musical interlude, a kind of sound conversation between metal post, wooden block and child, is repeated over and over until the block is dropped and the child wanders away.
As a pedagogist I have the honour of working with children, educators and families on the unceded lands of the Qualicum and K’omox peoples, known today as Parksville/Qualicum Beach and Courtenay/Comox. I visit multiple early years classrooms each week, both infant and toddler classrooms, and classrooms for 3- to 5-year-old children. Sound and music are an integral part of all the classrooms. The moment described above, when a child, a wooden block and a metal post come together, awakened my attention to sound and provoked me to wonder, what is sound? Though not materially solid, can it be felt? Can we touch it? Can it touch us?
Thinking with moments such as the one described above, where sound reverberates among child, material and air, this blog invites attention to how sound might live as an aesthetic and relational language in early years spaces, and to how one might think with the transformative possibilities that attending to sound might offer. What does it do to pay attention to moments that take place between children and sound? How might thinking with sound invite us to slow down and reimagine education in early childhood spaces?
In the short documentary Listen by the National Film Board, narrator David New remarks, “The world is a huge musical composition going on all the time, without a beginning and, presumably, without an ending.” New also cautions, “We’re living in a kind of dreadful time where we have sound overkill, and that’s a real problem.”[1] Music and the sound-worlds of early years classrooms can be overwhelming and, at the same time, go unnoticed: They are so ever-present they become unheard, and although we are often not consciously aware of them, they can create tensions.
In two different childcare spaces, the educators and I have wondered what kinds of sound and listening matter in early years spaces. When we invite sound to fill silence, what are we inviting in? What are we taking for granted, proscribing, ignoring or excluding? The immaterial and felt nature of sound complexifies paying attention to the ways that sound and music move and affect us. In response to children’s curiosities and investigations, we are interested in attuning to and reimagining the acoustic worlds of young children. We ask, how might we listen with children and the world? In each distinct space our investigations with sound unfold in unique ways in response to the lives and curiosities of the children and educators, and the acoustic worlds they share.
To pay close attention to the ways that children investigate with sound, the educators and I recognize that we need to slow ourselves down so that we can be present to deeply listen and respond. But what is meant by slowing down? What does that look like in practice? Slowing down is not a passive way of being present. It doesn’t mean we do nothing or stand on the sidelines. When we think with and put into practice slow pedagogies, we adjust our pace to the pace of children to pay close attention to their curiosities. We join children in the way they pay attention, sharing their wonderment and interests. We slow down to notice and to tend to children’s words, actions and relationships with the world so that we can respond to, support and enrich their investigations.
The educators and I still our hands, bodies and minds by becoming co-researchers, creating space for close attention to the subtle ways children engage with sound. In doing so, we become collective participants with children’s curiosities and investigations.
In an infant early-years space a child slaps their hands on the wooden table: bang bang, BANG. They pause, smiling, and glance up at a child sitting across the table. The other child responds—bang, bang, BANG-BANG—and soon the room resounds with a back-and-forth conversation-like call and response of hands meeting tabletop: bang-bang-bang, BANG . . . BANG.
In a shared infant-toddler classroom, jazz music plays softly on a small speaker. A child reaches out and presses a finger into the top of the speaker and holds it there. I wonder what the child is experiencing, so I place one of my fingers beside hers. I immediately feel the vibrations of the music running through my fingertip and into the palm of my hand, like a rhythmic current of energy. The child and I remove our fingers, leaving behind small grains of sand that have been shaken loose by the vibrations. The sand granules dance and jump in response to the vibrations of the music. We laugh as we watch the sand grains jazz-dance.
The educators and I wonder if privileging commercialized music made specifically for children and heard through speakers that are connected to smartphones limits the sounds we hear and the connections we make with each other and the world. We decide that, for a week, we will resist playing commercialized children’s music to make space for other sounds that the music excludes and silences. Through putting this intention into practice we become aware of the presence of subtle sounds such as the rough scratching of chalk on the chalk board, quiet conversation, rain splashing into puddles and pinging off plastic raincoats, insistent crow calls, distant vehicles, and the quiet song of the wind in the trees.
In the small park across from the yard, a crow lands on the grass, and calls “Caw, caw, caw-caw caw.” A child working in the sandbox stops digging and points to the crows. “Crows.” More crows join the one who has called, settling on the grass and meandering here and there with their slow, waddling crow gait. The children and educators line the fence to watch. Every now and again the crows pause to peck at the ground, then wander on again. A passerby approaches with a dog on a lead, and the crows leap into the air and fly away. “Caw caw caw caw.”
Over the week adult ears become deeply attuned to children’s attention to sound. Slowing down to make space for sounds other than commercialized children’s music offers moments of connection with each other and the world that would otherwise pass unnoticed.
I invite you to pause for a moment to listen closely to this short recording of children, educators and their shared acoustic worlds. What sounds stand out to you? What sounds are missing?
In an infant classroom the educators and I gather with a small group of children, a few store-bought drums made from synthetics, and a handmade drum made of local wood and deer skin. The difference in the vibrational and felt qualities of the sound of the two types of drums, and the very different responses of the children, provokes us to wonder with differences in sound made by different materials. An educator invites us to think with a video, The Spirit of the Drum, where drummer/singer Jessie Everson remarks, “When someone sings you can tell whether or not they feel the song. You’ve got to have a good ear to hear that.” David Dawson, a First Nations singer/drummer adds, “The energy that you put into the drum, that’s echoed in the singing. Love, kindness, respect and grace.”[2]
The educators and I think with the difference it brings to hear and sense what Jessie Everson and David Dawson allude to. The vibrations of hand meeting animal skin are physically felt and call us to move. Our bodies respond with the sound of a deerskin drum—the children and educators sway, stomp, dip and twirl. We are touched in indescribable ways that drumming on a store-bought drum does not offer. We wonder with the difference the material makes, and how the touch of our hands and our voices also echo intention, respect and sensitivity. What happens when touch, voice and drum come together? They seem to be tangled and knotted, contained within the sound waves and vibrations that go out, to touch us right through to our bones. We notice this as children’s bodies respond to the strength and vibrations when the deerskin drum is played.
A small group of toddlers gathers with an educator and a deerskin drum. The educator softly taps the middle of the drum with a leather-wrapped drumstick. The children sway and sing to the beat tapped out on the drum: “Fly like an eagle, fly like an eagle on wings of pure light, on wings of pure light.” At the end of the song the educator remarks how the gentle tapping invites us to sing softly and move our bodies slowly. She strikes the drum in the middle, harder, and the drum calls out a single deep BOOM. The children laugh and bounce, up, down, up, down. The sound of the drum lingers in the air. When the educator strikes the drum again—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—some of the children stand and begin to stomp their feet on the floor to match the rhythm: STOMP, STOMP, STOMP.
In the video The Gift of the Drum, Jeannie McDonald shares, “The drum comes from the skin of an animal. The hoop of the drum comes from a living tree, and when we put these things together, something new is created”; “The drumbeat travels through our body and connects our body to the earth and to the natural world.”[3]
Over a full year (and maybe longer) the children in the infant classroom continue to return to the metal pole. They bang the pole with small push bikes, rocks, sticks, wooden blocks and wooden hammers, sometimes singly and sometimes as a group. Their collective interest in and investigations with sound are not done. Through paying attention to children’s curiosities and thinking with sound as an aesthetic language, we are provoked to ask many questions that unsettle taken-for-granted and habitual sound-worlds in early years spaces.
We create conditions for rich connection with each other and the world as we attune with children to the acoustic worlds we mutually inhabit. We are reminded that sound is not just something to fill space or to manage bodies; it is part of the world that children are already in relation with. Through slowing down to think intentionally with children—with their curiosities, wonderings, and investigations—we are invited to touch and be touched by sound, creating space for relational ways of being. How might we make space for sound as we attune and tend to the acoustic worlds we share?
Sources cited:
[1] Listen (The National Film Board of Canada, 2009), video, 6 min., 2:30, 3:21. https://www.nfb.ca/film/listen/
[2] The Spirit of the Drum: Teachings from Our Knowledge Keepers (Indigenous Education, School District #71 Comox Valley, n.d.), YouTube video, 30 min., 34 sec., 1:47, 10:10. https://www.comoxvalleyschools.ca/indigenous-education/drumming/
[3] The Gift of the Drum (Indigenous Education, School District #71 Comox Valley, n.d.), YouTube video, 6 min., 16 sec., 2:04, 1:15. https://www.comoxvalleyschools.ca/indigenous-education/drumming/