The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of nature- experiential art activities on the emotional intelligence of preschoolers.
The subjects in this study were 50 young children in two different kindergartens located in the city of Sach...
The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of nature- experiential art activities on the emotional intelligence of preschoolers.
The subjects in this study were 50 young children in two different kindergartens located in the city of Sacheon, south Gyeongsang province. They were at the Western age of 5. 25 children from S kindergarten were selected as an experimental group, and the others from Y kindergarten that was adjacent to S kindergarten were grouped into a control group. The experimental group was engaged in nature- experiential art activities, and the control group participated in a project about general life themes. The instrument used in this study was Lee Byeong-rae(1997)'s Preschool Emotional Intelligence Test. The programs were conducted during a 13-week period of time from June 4 to December 21, 2007. A pretest and posttest were carried out respectively before and after the programs.
The collected data were encoded and analyzed by SPSS 14.0 program. Independent-samples t-test was utilized to see if the experimental and control groups were equivalent in the pretest. But ANVOCA was employed to analyze the posttest data since the two groups didn't appear to be equivalent.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, the nature-experiential art activities had a significant impact on self-motivating regulating skills, self-emotional regulating skills and interpersonal skills, which were subfactors of emotional intelligence.
Second, the nature-experiential art activities exerted no significant influence on self-awareness, self-expressiveness and awareness of others' emotion, which were subfactors of emotional intelligence.