Communicating and Thinking Through Drawing Activity in Early Childhood

This article considers drawing as a meaning-making activity that takes place in certain sociocultural contexts to find evidence for its communicative potentials as well as the relationship between thought and drawing in early childhood. The researcher challenges traditional views about young children's drawing that focus on the result of the drawing activity, shifting to more contemporary views that consider it a sociocultural semiotic activity. To illuminate children's meaning-making process through drawing as well as the ways that drawing activity mediates their thinking and communication efforts and helps them develop, the researcher explores the relative literature and analyzes, through the lenses of the sociocultural approach, certain kindergartners’ drawing activities derived from previous observations in family or educational contexts. Finally, the researcher presents the consequent implications for early childhood education and research in this area.