The impact of visual arts on the holistic development of preschool children

Abstract

In preschool education, the visual arts are usually relegated to core areas or reduced to crafts, limiting their educational potential. This study aims to determine the relationship between the systematic practice of the plastic arts and comprehensive child development, and evaluate its effectiveness as a teaching strategy through learning situations oriented to key dimensions. 41 4-year-old children (18 girls, 23 boys) from the “Eva Sámano de López Mateos”
Kindergarten, Río Grande, Zacatecas, participated, distributed in a control group (n = 20) and an experimental group (n
= 21). A mixed design was used with three measurements (pretest, intermediate, posttest). The intervention included two didactic situations “I am a painter and I appreciate art” and “I am a sculptor”, implemented in 14 90-minute sessions. The instruments were: ad hoc rubric for emotional, social and creative dimensions, TEPSI adapted for psychomotor skills, in addition to interviews and a log. The analysis was performed in SPSS v26, with descriptives and Mann–
Whitney U for non-normality. In global performance, the control went from 62.27% pretest to 67.60% intermediate and
81.48% posttest, while the experimental advanced from 50.96% to 71.65% and 89.20%; the initial gap of −11.31 p.p. The findings indicate that plastic arts teaching situations consistently favor comprehensive development, with emphasis on psychomotor skills, and offer operational guidelines for teaching practice in preschool.