Improvisation is a foundational aspect of musical development, fostering children’s creative expression and independent musicianship (Juan, 2025). Despite its benefits, improvisation may be underutilized in music instruction (Gallo & Kuchenbrod, 2022), especially in piano instruction (Rowe, et al., 2015). This is due, in part, to instructors’ uncertainty in facilitating these types of activities with young students and highlights a need for further research into how children conceptualize and engage in improvisation, particularly when connecting musical sounds to extra-musical ideas, emotions, and narratives (Guarriello, 2023; Juan, 2025). Exploring these processes can provide insights into how children perceive and enact improvisation, informing strategies for guiding young learners (Juan, 2025). As such, the primary aim of this in-progress study is to investigate how children use elements of story (published and child-created) to direct their intent when improvising at the piano. Secondary aims include (a) investigating children’s experiences in group discussion, planning, and performance of improvisations to enrich shared musical storytelling and (b) their experiences in exploring how the diversity of book characters and each students’ creativity contributes to a more vibrant story and musical performance.Participants (N = 4) in this basic qualitative study attended a weekly group piano class for young beginners and one-on-one piano lessons. During the class, the instructor read selected children’s books, facilitated group discussion of characters, and encouraged children’s ideas regarding characters’ backstory, feelings, motives, and actions. Data collection (completed in 2025) will include observations (group classes, private lessons, group performances of musical storytelling with improvisation), questionnaires completed by parents, and semi-structured interviews conducted with individual students (including opportunities for piano improvisation). Data will be analyzed by using cycles of coding and grouping that are iterative, reflective, and interpretive (Saldaña, 2025). Preliminary data suggest that children’s exploration of book characters’ backstories, feelings, and motivations helps them to (a) make sense of music, emotion, and movement connections, (c) focus and order musical intentions that shape improvisations, and (c) through guided discussion, encourages their curiosity and appreciation of diversity represented in characters and musical depictions shared by classmates. We anticipate discussing implications for using storytelling to facilitate piano improvisation with children, using story characters to explore feelings (of self and others) to shape discussion and creative activities, and the potential for future research in using similar experiences as foundations for additional collaborative improvisation and composition experiences with young learners.