PSYCHOMOTOR TRAINING PROGRAM WITH ELEMENTS OF THEATRICAL PLAY ON MOTOR PROFICIENCY AND COGNITIVE SKILLS OF PRESCHOOLERS

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a psychomotor training program with elements of theatrical play, upon the cognitive skills and motor proficiency of 41 Greek preschoolers who attended in two separate regular schools, in Heraklion, Crete. The two schools randomly served as the experimental - EG (N= 20 students) and control - CG (N=21 students) groups. The Bruininks- Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency -Short Form (BOTMP ? SF) (Bruininks, 1978) assessed the motor skills, while the ATHENA test (Paraskevopoulos & Paraskevopoulou, 2011) assessed the cognitive skills. The EG followed a ten - week program, twice per week. The program was designed according to the psychomotor development theory (Zimmer, 2007) enriched with theatrical play. 2 X 2 MANOVA, with t-parameter estimates for post hoc comparisons were used for statistical analyses of motor proficiency. Significant interaction effects with respect to ‘general motor proficiency’ was found. With respect to cognitive skills separate 2 X 2 ANOVAs were used and the results were significant for ‘language proportions’, ‘vocabulary’, ‘picture memorization’, ‘distinction of graphs’, ‘complete proposals’ and ‘word completion’. The results provided implications for curriculum design, effective teaching and preparing future teachers to work with alternative ways