We present a multi-method design for elucidating young, mostly illiterate children’s (grades 1 and 2 of Swiss elementary school, ages 6–8) ideas about energy. The design uses semi-structured interviews and video recordings as the main methods of data generation and collection, respectively. A plurality of tasks, including drawing, sorting and a newly developed picture stories task, target core aspects of the scientific energy concept in selected contexts. These tasks provide various opportunities for the children to connect to their prior experiences and express ideas verbally and non-verbally in age-adequate ways, e.g., by gestures or drawings. We illustrate the level of detail and complexity of the children’s responses and show how these reflect the children’s associations with energy and their patterns of argumentation. These rich data enable analysis regarding various aspects of the scientific energy concept, including sources, users, forms, and the transfer of energy, and the identification of possible starting points for early energy instruction.

For accessing young children’s intuitive ideas about energy, twenty-five first and second graders of Swiss elementary schools (age 6–8 years, M = 7 years 6 months) were asked to draw or write what they associated with energy and subsequently interviewed about their drawing or written note. The responses were videotaped. The children’s responses, including gestures and other nonverbal responses, were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (QCA). A concept-driven approach was used to uncover links between the children’s ideas and the core aspects of the scientific energy concept: forms/manifestations, transformation, transfer, dissipation/degradation, and conservation, and a corresponding coding frame was developed. Though the participating children had not encountered energy or topics like electricity or human nutrition in formal schooling, almost all (N = 24) knew the term energy and used it in the interview. The findings indicate that already young children have nuanced ideas on how energy manifests and behaves that can be expressed by means of drawings/notes and verbally. These ideas refer to energy as an inherent feature of certain objects, as a causal agent, or as a kind of substance and are expressed in association with humans, electric sources and consumers, and vehicles, and their activities or features. The developed category systems summarize how young children express themselves about energy and enable comparison of these ideas with all core aspects of energy. The findings of this study indicate how the very first “steppingstones” for energy learning in early science classrooms might look like, and where “blind spots” or aspects that need further attention should be expected. The detailed analysis of the children’s statements with the developed coding frames is a first step towards reconstruction of the children’s mental models of energy and may serve as a basis for the development of educational and diagnostic tools.

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