Life painting - art as a stimulus to the development of phonological awareness

Martina Burazer, Borka Batinić Puškarić, Valentina Rosković

Dječji vrtić Trešnjevka

martina.burazer@vrtic-tresnjevka.hr, borkabp1963@gmail.com, valentina.roskovic1996@gmail.com

The importance of art education for the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children and youth

Abstract

Phonological awareness begins to develop in children's preschool age, which refers to recognizing linguistic units smaller than words (Shankweiler et al., 1995). Measures of phonological naming and phonological awareness in the preschool period proved to be good predictors of word recognition (Ivšac Pavliša, 2011). Artfulness in art pedagogy is based on a successful practice that often uses art as the content of activities aimed to enrich children's understanding of everything to which children are exposed (Balić et al., 2023). The aim of this paper is to examine how art can stimulate the development of phonological awareness and phonological naming in preschool children. The sample will include children with a chronological age between 5 years to until starting school. The first group of children (N=25) will be encouraged to create their own signature - their own name through fine art using different art techniques and dance for the duration of one month. The second, control group, of children (N=25) will also, during the same month, be asked to write their own name on a sheet of paper in the way they want during the activities provided by the preschool curriculum to encourage the development of pre-skills in reading and writing. Both groups of children (N=50) will be tested before and after completing the activities with a test for assessing pre-reading and writing skills PredČip (Kuvač Kraljević & Lenček, 2012). Descriptive-narrative notes and photo and video documentation will be taken during the research. The contribution of this research is that it will indicate different approaches and possibilities of improving the prerequisites for the development of reading and writing through art and emphasize the need to enrich the preschool curriculum with artistic approaches. 

Key words

artfulness; art; letter naming; phonological awareness; preschool curriculum