ANALYSIS OF FIVE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN'S PICTURES IN TERMS OF DEVELOPMENTAL DRAWING SKILLS

Drawing plays a significant role in enabling children to reflect themselves and express their emotions and thoughts about events. Furthermore, drawings serve as general indicators of children's developmental progress. This study aims to examine the free drawing activities of five-year-old children attending public and private preschool institutions in terms of their developmental drawing skills. The study group consists of 60 five-year-old children attending two public and two private preschool institutions located in the Selçuklu district of Konya, Türkiye. A descriptive survey model was employed in the research. During the application process, each child was asked to create a drawing of their choice without any time constraints. It was emphasized that the children could freely use paints and drawing paper as they wished. The implementation was carried out during the 2017–2018 academic year. The free drawings of the sampled children were individually analyzed based on the five developmental stages of children's drawings (scribbling stage, schema stage, schematic stage, realism stage, and apparent naturalism stage). Each characteristic observed in the drawings, corresponding to the developmental stages, was assigned one point. In the data analysis, the total scores of the drawings produced by each child were taken into consideration. For the analysis of the children's drawings, descriptive classifications were used. Additionally, to determine whether there were significant differences in developmental drawing skills between the two groups (public and private preschools), the Mann–Whitney U Test was conducted. According to the results of the study, it was seen that children who attended private schools scored higher in developmental drawing skills and drew pictures in more diverse categories.