The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate whether 3 - 4-year-old children can be successfully taught music literacy skills, and demonstrate practical applications of the skill by performing simple melodies and rhythms from conventional music notation. Rhythm and pitch were investigated separately, therefore the thesis is likewise divided into two sections: rhythm and pitch. Three groups of children participated in each section, with ten children in each group. Each child received 20 ten-minute individual teaching sessions. The children who participated in the rhythm studies successfully learned to perform, from conventional rhythm notation, previously unseen phrases comprised of semibreves, minims, crotchets, and quavers. The first rhythm study was based on a simple counting teaching methodology. The second used a Dual Task teaching methodology in which rhythm performance was broken down into the component parts of maintaining a constant pulse, and learning the relationship between different note values. The final rhythm group was taught using a method based on connectionist principles. The children were simply exposed to written training rhythms and their correct performance, and were given no rules or syllables from which to work. The children who participated in the pitch studies successfully learned to perform, from conventional notation, melodies comprised of Middle C and the four notes above. Rather than using letter names to describe the notes in the conventional manner, they were described in such a way as to help the children remember their location on the stave and also on the instrument, or, in one of the studies, by the use of contextual information. Two main conclusions were drawn: that 3 - 4-year-olds both easily manage and enjoy learning to read music, and that investigating learning and performance in other areas can lead to the discovery of new approaches that may facilitate the learning of music reading.