The aim of this paper was by relying on the relevant theoretical sources to enlighten the role and significance of counting-out rhymes in the development of preschool children’s musical abilities. The starting point was the fact that contemporary music pedagogy more often maintains the stance that all children are quite musically talented and capable of performing musical activities, although their achievements are of unequal quality.
It is emphasized that a child’s musical ability is demonstrated through musical sensibility (hearing which implies sensitivity for the height and strength of musical tones, the sound colors, the relationship between tones based on their length) and the arousal of interests in music (which as a cognitive, emotional and voluntary reaction of a child to music can be interpreted as children's musicality).
It is also pointed out that counting-out rhymes, as a type of musical activities, present the child’s most musical poetic, rhythmic and metric creativity, and that their specificity is that the counting-out rhymes stand out as children's creativity mirroring the beauty (educational, emotional, aesthetic) in the unbreakable bond between the creators and the performers of the same content within the same age range.
Furthermore, it is highlighted that children interact with each other creating musical content and musical activity, and the specificity of such collaboration is that some counting-out rhymes reflect the environment (the region) in which a child as a creator lives, so, not rarely, the same counting-out rhyme undergoes a change when transferred to another environment, and thus it appears as a new version (variant) of the same counting-out rhyme. The special importance of counting-out rhymes is observed in the correlation with other contents and children activities.
The importance of leisure time musical activities in children`s education and development as established by reformers of the music pedagogy
