I would like to live over the rainbow: Dreams of young children

Abstract

Dreams are an indicator of the extent of imagination. Young children have simple, fabulous and happy dreams. This study tries to determine the dreams of young children. For this purpose, drawings and narrations of 483 children aged between 3–4 and 5 years attending the kindergartens and pre-school classes in a city and district in the southwestern Turkey concerning their dreams were examined. In the study, Clark’s Drawing Abilities Test was used and the drawings were classified according to their subject areas. At the end of the study, it was determined that young children made drawings reflecting the culture in their dreams, and their dreams varied according to their age, gender and residence location. Dreaming is a multi-directional cognitive process that is affected by factors like culture, age, gender and residence location. © The Author(s) 2019.