Visual Art Activities to Support Preschool Children’s Development: A PRISMA-Guided Systematic Literature Review of Indexed and Peer-Reviewed Literature

Visual art activities are used widely in early childhood education as opportunities for creative exploration, representation, communication and engagement with materials. However, evidence concerning their contribution to the development of preschool children is dispersed across developmental domains, study designs and teacher-practice research. This systematic literature review synthesised recent empirical evidence on visual art activities in preschool and kindergarten contexts and was reported in accordance with PRISMA 2020. Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, and Google Scholar were searched on 17 September 2026 for English-language peer-reviewed empirical journal articles published from 2021 to 2026. The first 100 Google Scholar results ranked by relevance were screened as a supplementary source. Twenty-five studies met the clarified eligibility criteria, were appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT), and were synthesised thematically with support from Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and NVivo. Three overarching themes were identified: (1) cognitive and creative development; (2) social-emotional, communication and physical development; and (3) teacher, pedagogical and contextual factors shaping implementation. Across heterogeneous qualitative, descriptive, mixed-methods and experimental evidence, visual art experiences were generally associated with creativity, meaning making, communication, emotional expression and fine motor engagement. Because the evidence varied substantially in design, measures, samples and intervention definitions, these findings represent reported associations, perceptions and intervention-specific effects rather than uniform causal evidence.