Formal musical notation is considered a ‘universal language’, known and played worldwide by everyone from basic learners to orchestra musicians. However, when it comes to teaching it to younger children, accessibility concerns arise, such as economic and socio-cultural background or the adaptability of the formal notation to children’s developmental characteristics. During the last century, artists, pedagogues, and composers have developed alternative notations, offering different paths to represent music visually. Considering both children’s development and previous data on children’s alternative notation, we will guide the reader through the first stage of a participatory design project with first-grade children. This project aims to create an alternative graphic system for musical literacy, demonstrating that Graphic Design and Participatory Design can be used to develop more democratic access to musical literacy. The first stage of the research involved asking children to imagine they were the first-ever inventors of musical notation, aiming to visually translate the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. From this activity, individual notations were created by the participants, resulting in five different groups: Linear/Wave Notations, Mixed Notations, Shape-Code Notations, Abstract Notations, and Pictographic Notations. By the end of this chapter, we will highlight how children draw music, the symbols or figures they choose to express the intentions behind the visual transcription of a melody, if there are matching features between children’s notations to be carefully analysed, and the connections between children’s and other exploratory notations.