RHYTHM, MOVEMENT, AND STORY: A PSYCHOMOTOR PRE-LITERACY INTERVENTION WITH PRESCHOOL CHILDREN IN RESIDENTIAL SOCIAL CARE. A LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDY

Children growing up in residential social care remain conspicuously underrepresented in early literacy research, despite facing well-documented developmental risks. This longitudinal qualitative case study examines a psychomotor and rhythmic intervention designed to support pre-reading and cognitive skills in two focal preschool children embedded in a mixed-age group of five (two preschoolers, two Grade 1 students, and one Grade 2 student) attending a Greek residential care center. The six-month protocol comprised 52 sessions delivered twice weekly (45 minutes per session) and combined movement, rhythmic activities, storytelling, dramatization with finger puppets and marionettes, and the collaborative composition of short poems for each letter of the alphabet, structured around a stable session sequence of activation, main activity, and relaxation. Data were collected through systematic observation, letter recognition checklists, poem recall tasks, and engagement coding at baseline, post-intervention, and three months after the focal children transitioned to Grade 1. Findings document gains in letter recognition, phonological sensitivity, sustained attention, and active participation, with substantial maintenance of these gains at follow-up. The study contributes a theoretically integrated, replicable protocol grounded in embodied cognition, rhythm-based literacy theory, and sociocultural perspectives, and offers exploratory evidence that low-cost multisensory interventions delivered in residential settings can support school readiness and the transition to formal schooling.