This article presents the results of the research of the influence of art programs on social and emotional education of schoolchildren. Nowadays in the leading countries specialized practices of social and emotional learning are applied and built into educational school programs. The purpose of the article is to determine the relationship between artistic and emotional development of schoolchildren taking into account gender and age differences. Art programs are an integrated study of music, artistic improvisation, modeling and drawing. Pupils' knowledge of emotions was determined by the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) method. The test tasks are aimed at measuring the ability to identify six basic emotions (sadness, happiness, fear, anger, disgust or surprise) by facial expression depending on the degree of their manifestation. This methodology is also a cognitive test, as the test items focus on emotional and social cognition. The result indicators for the ERT cover the percentage and number of correct or incorrect answers, as well as the total response latency, which can be considered either for individual emotions or for all emotions simultaneously. The results of the study establish the main patterns of the impact of arts education on the social and emotional learning and development of schoolchildren. The results indicate that there is a direct positive correlation between the increase in emotional knowledge and the improvement of psycho-emotional state as a result of using art education. Also, the experimental results can be used in the assessment and prevention of psychosocial developmental delays and affective disorders in schoolchildren. The practical significance of this study lies in the potential of preventing behavioral and affective problems based on the knowledge of the relationship with emotions, social adjustment and depressive moods in schoolchildren.