Preschool Children’s Drawings: Frequency and Theme Analysis

Abstract

The preschool age is called the golden age of drawing; drawing is a “golden” mediator of literacy development. In this article, we focus on the content the preschool children put into their drawings. The goal of study has been the comparison of preschool children’s drawings with respect to the thematic categories of drawn object, and to identify differences between boys and girls. There were analyzed pictures (N=61) drawn by preschool children, from 5 years and 9 months to 6 years and 11 months. Pictures were drawn following the content-neutral (indifferent) instruction: “Draw, what is on your mind now.” The obtained data were subjected to thematic and frequency analysis. Results: data shows that the average number of objects is higher in girls’ drawings: girls drew 4±5 objects on average, while boys drew only 2±2. The number of drawn objects increases with age. Objects drawn could be divided onto 14 thematic categories; most popular are natural objects (sun, mammal, flowers, clouds etc.). The most popular theme in the group of boys are Vehicles, in girls group themes vary more. Practical impact: if we know what children like to draw, we have a strong motivating element for the development of communication literacy, especially writing.