Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 Color Your Life Training for Early Childhood for Kindergarten and Preschool Teachers Katrim Alifa Putrikita1*.
Malida Fatimah2 12Faculty of Psychology.
Mercu Buana University of Yogyakarta.
Indonesia *Correspondence email katrim@mercubuana-yogya.
ac,id ARTICLE INFO Abstract Article history:
Received Juny 2025 Revised August 2025 Accepted August 2025 Tantrums are frequent emotional outbursts among kindergarten children and pose challenges for teachers in maintaining classroom order.
Teachers, therefore, require practical skills to support childrenAos emotional regulation effectively.
This community service program aimed to strengthen teachersAo competencies through Color Your Life training, delivered online to kindergarten teachers.
The training introduced strategies for managing childrenAos emotions and practical techniques for handling tantrums.
A preAepost evaluation was conducted to assess the programAos impact.
Results showed a marked improvement in teachersAo understanding, with p-value = 0.
< 0.
Participants reported that the training was highly beneficial in assisting them to respond more effectively to studentsAo tantrums.
These findings suggest that color your life training can significantly enhance teachersAo ability to manage classroom challenges and foster a more supportive learning environment in early childhood education.
Keywords Color your life, early childhood, play therapy Introduction One of the study programs at STAIM Blora is the Early Childhood Islamic Education Study Program (PIAUD), where all students are PAUD teachers in Blora.
Based on this, in addition to courses on early childhood education, it is essential to provide material related to child development in psychology.
The goal is for PAUD teachers to be able to practice the material obtained in lectures to their students through the development of early childhood psychology.
Based on the discussion process with partners, it is known that there are no lecturers in the PIAUD Study Program who are psychology graduates or have the title of Psychologist.
This limitation causes materials about early childhood in psychology to be less able to be delivered optimally.
In fact, according to partners.
Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 it is essential to understand children psychologically, especially regarding matters related to the expression of early childhood emotions, which usually cannot be conveyed through words.
When early childhood students can express their feelings well, and PAUD teachers can also identify their students' emotions, the learning process in the classroom will be facilitated.
Santrock .
explains that early childhood, or early childhood, is in the age range of 3-5 years, where children have begun to face a wider social world usually characterized by formal pre-school years.
In Indonesia, at this age, most children have started attending preschool education in playgroups (KB) and kindergartens (TK).
Early childhood has its challenges when it comes to adjusting to a limited social environment with teachers or friends.
Regarding cognitive development, early childhood is in the pre-operational stage, where children still have difficulty conveying what they feel.
This, of course, makes it difficult for teachers to identify the emotions felt by their students.
When children struggle to express their emotions and teachers fail to identify them, they are more likely to throw tantrums.
Play therapy is one technique that is quite effective for early childhood because it involves play.
Play therapy will be more effective for children because it matches the interests and pleasures of children so that children can learn without feeling pressured.
According to Hall.
Kaduson, and Schaefer .
, play therapy is an effective intervention for children because, through play therapy, children's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors can be directly revealed without considering the extent of the child's verbal and reasoning abilities.
The appropriate play therapy to identify emotions felt by children is to color their lives (Sridhar et al.
, 2.
Color Your Life is a type of play therapy where the feelings felt by children will be identified through the colors poured by children on their drawing paper.
According to Cabe (Kaduson & Schaefer, 2.
, immediate action is needed to identify these negative emotions, before maladaptive behaviors such as tantrums appear.
Children's recognition of their own emotions is easier to do by using media, such as stationery .
aper, markers.
crayons, colored pencils.
Color Your Life games need to be given to children, especially when children are feeling negative emotions, to minimize tantrums.
Structured play activities have been shown to improve childrenAos emotional regulation and reduce the intensity of emotional outbursts.
For example, developmentally appropriate gamebased interventions can significantly enhance emotional control and task engagement among preschoolers (Lambert.
DiCarlo.
Rueter, 2.
A systematic review also highlights that games with rules and structured play approaches help decrease negative emotional symptoms and foster emotional intelligence in children aged 3Ae7 years (Veraska, et al, 2.
Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 Based on this.
KB and TK teachers must master the color-your-life technique and practice it directly with their students.
Color Your Life training needs to be given to KB and TK teachers to help identify the emotions felt by children.
Kindergarten (TK) and playgroup (KB) teachers often struggle to manage childrenAos emotional outbursts, such as tantrums, due to limited strategies and practical tools to help children recognize and regulate their feelings.
Based on this need.
KB and TK teachers must master the Color Your Life technique and practice it directly with their students.
The Color Your Life training is therefore essential to equip teachers with skills to identify childrenAos emotions more accurately and guide them in managing negative emotional states effectively.
Methods Based on the problems that have been described, the solution offered is Color Your Life Training for Early Childhood for KB and TK Teachers.
The team will provide training, monitoring, and evaluation through this training.
This training design is carried out online.
All students from the PIAUD study program at STAIM Blora attended the training.
The following is the technical design of the drawing and coloring training:
Conduct an initial assessment.
Coordinating with the manager of STAIM Blora PIAUD Study Program regarding the training date and things that need to be prepared.
Designing PowerPoint material that will be displayed.
Conducting Color Your Life training.
Conduct monitoring with the management of the study program.
Conduct evaluation.
Provide review and feedback Participants of this community service program are teachers, as well as students from the PIAUD study program at STAIM Blora.
This community service was conducted on the Zoom online platform on 7th August 2024.
As for the data collection process, all participants were asked to fill out a pretest and post-test questionnaire during the training.
The results of the questionnaire were then analyzed using a t-test to determine the difference in understanding of all participants.
The pre-test and post-test questionnaires used in this community service program were designed to reveal understanding before and after the activity.
There were seven questions that participants needed to fill out.
The results of the pre-test and post-test were then analyzed using a difference test to see the change in participants' understanding.
Result and Discussion.
Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 Community service with the title Color Your Life Training for Early Childhood for KB and TK Teachers has gone well.
Fifty-six participants attended this training.
The manager of STAIM Blora's PIAUD Study Program stated that this activity increased the students' knowledge about the principles of learning emotions in early childhood, which involves games.
In addition, the study program manager explained that students felt happy with the training provided because the training games were convenient for students.
In addition to the manager of the study program, the participants of this training, namely students of the PIAUD STAIM Blora Study Program, also responded positively to this training.
This program is expected to assist teachers in terms of psychological education, as there are currently no lecturers with a background in psychology in the PIAUD program.
Participants stated that through this training, they became aware of the Color Your Life game and its function in managing emotions in children.
In addition, participants also said that they wanted to practice it immediately with their students at school.
Based on the results of the data analysis, it is known that participants have increased knowledge about the Color of Your Life game before and after the training is conducted.
The measurement uses a knowledge scale given to all participants before and after the training is conducted.
Based on the results of the difference test analysis using paired sample t-test, it is known that the p-value = 001 .
< 0.
means a significant difference in knowledge scores before and after the Color Your Life training is given.
In general, it can be seen that there is an increase in participants' knowledge about the Color Your Life game, as well as the desire to practice it with students immediately.
Table 1.
Paired Samples Statistics Mean Pair 1 Std.
Deviation Std.
Error
Mean
PRETEST
POSTEST
Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 Table 2.
Paired Samples Test Paired Differences Mean Pair PRETEST 1 POSTEST 1.
Std.
Deviation Std.
Error Mean 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper - -.
Sig.
Psychoeducational workshops enhanced teachers' understanding of students' psychological development, leading to improved classroom dynamics and academic performance (Putri & Laeli, 2.
Teachers equipped with emotional awareness training show enhanced ability to manage preschool children's emotions through emotion coaching strategies and reflective practices (Ulloa et al.
Quality teacher-child interactions that consider children's emotions and employ responsive strategies create more positive classroom atmospheres with reduced aggressive conflict and improved emotional resolution (Ulloa et al.
, 2.
There is a common assumption that exposure to color can have positive psychological effects (Jonauskaite et al.
, 2.
However, empirical evidence supporting this claim is weak (Jonauskaite et al.
, 2020.
O'Connor, 2.
Therefore.
Jonauskaite et al.
conducted two studies to examine the role of color perception in reducing self-reported stress and anxiety.
In both studies, commercially available color therapy was used.
Stress and anxiety reduction were measured by comparing data before and after the intervention.
In addition, participants' subjective opinions were also collected through open-ended The main results showed that the participants' stress and anxiety were lower after the session than before.
Color therapy can bring positive energy that plays a role in improving the mood and psychological state of children.
This approach focuses on regulating the body's energy flow by unconsciously absorbing color energy.
The aim is to reactivate the function of each organ, ultimately contributing to the improvement of overall health (Zagloul et al.
, 2.
Color therapy is considered a very ancient method of alternative medicine dating back more than 2500 years.
It has been known since ancient times to ancient civilizations, especially in the East.
Al-Aqsa (India and Chin.
, the Middle East (Mesopotamia.
Egypt, and Ira.
, and Greece (Al-Sweed.
Zagloul et al.
, 2.
Color therapy can be viewed from various aspects such as its role in different cultures.
Reducing physical and psychological disorders and Journal Of Community Service https://ejurnal.
mercubuana-yogya.
id/index.
php/Psychocare/index VOL.
No.
1 August 2025, 13-20 their effect on work climate, industry, creativity, and especially medical and hospital settings are some examples of color therapy (Gupta, 2.
Conclusion The Color Your Life training for early childhood given to PIAUD undergraduate students of STAIM Blora, who are KB and TK teachers, positively impacted the The results of the data analysis showed an increase in knowledge about the Color Your Life game between before and after the training.
In addition, the participants also felt happy with this training because it was easy and practical to apply to students.
The participants stated that they wanted to practice in their respective schools immediately.
Recommendation STAIM Blora, especially the PIAUD S1 Study Program, is expected to provide this activity on an ongoing basis to increase the knowledge of its students.
The weakness of this study is that it only focuses on improving participants' understanding, without being able to directly observe the effects of applying color your life therapy to preschool students.
Meanwhile, the participants, who are also KB and TK teachers, are expected to be able to practice this game in their respective schools to help understand what students feel.
Hopefully, this Color Your Life training can be carried out in other locations to provide valuable and applicable knowledge to KB and TK Teachers.
In the future, similar programs can also measure how well teachers apply Color Your Life directly to preschool Acknowledgments Thank you.
STAIM Blora, especially the PIAUD Study Program, for the opportunity and support so that this Color Your Life training can be done Thank you to the Rector of STAIM Blora and his staff, the Head of the PIAUD Study Program of STAIM Blora and his staff, and the students of the PIAUD Study Program who have participated in this training.
References