The purpose of the study is to explore the effects of group art therapy using clay on reducing the
school stress of the elementary school students of first grade and improving their stress coping ability. 11
children who want to participate in the test were selected for the experimental group, and other 11 children
were selected for the control group based on the S elementary school students at C city in South
Gyeongsang Province after the guidelines were handed out. The group art therapy program was carried out
for the experimental group for total 15 times with 2-4 times in every week from March 21 until April 20,
2011. For the research tools, the school stress test and stress coping ability test were used, and pre, post,
follow-up test were carried out for the experimental group and control group. The data were computed for
a t-test for homogeneity and a repeated measures analysis of variance for effects test by using SPSS 19.0
program. The findings of this study are as follows. First, it can be seen that the group art therapy using
clay is effective in reducing the school stress of the elementary school students of first grade. Second, it can
be seen that the group art therapy using clay is effective to improve overall coping ability of the
elementary school students of first grade.