The effect of molding the plasticine on creativity in early childhood

Abstract

Objective: To examine the effect of molding the plasticine on creativity in early childhood by comparing creativity scores before and after the plasticine molding activity program of the control and experiment groups. Materials and Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental research. The sample was 16 kindergarten students aged 4 to 5 years old from a private school in Bangkok. Participants were divided into a control and experiment group. There were 8 participants in each group. Participants in the experiment group attended 16 sessions of plasticine molding activity whereas the control group participated in normal activities. Each session lasted 20 minutes. The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production [TCT-DP] was used to measure creativity of participants of both groups before and after taking part in this research. Descriptive statistics including frequency, percentage, median, range (min, max) were yielded. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests and Mann-Whitney U Test were analyzed. Results: There was no significant differences in creativity scores between the two groups before taking part in the program (U = 0.11, p = 0.92). In the experiment group, pre-test overall creativity score did not statistically differ from the post-test score (U = -0.95, p = 0.34). Although not statistically significant, the post-test of the experiment group was slightly higher than the pretest score whilst the post-test score in the control group was lower than the pre-test score. © 2018, Medical Association of Thailand. All rights reserved.