The effect of basic swimming education supported by educational games on gross motor skills in children aged 4-6 years

SUMMARY The aim of this research is to examine the gross motor development in children aged 4-6 who receive basic swimming training supported by play. The study population consists of 38 children (19 girls and 19 boys) who are registered for basic swimming training at the Bahçelievler Swimming Pool of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Sports Istanbul and do not know how to swim. The training groups were divided into two groups: experimental and control. The control group consisted of 19 children (58% girls, 42% boys) with an average age of 5.21 years (s.d. = 0.7), and the experimental group consisted of 19 children (42% girls, 58% boys) with an average age of 5.05 years (s.d. = 0.7). Both groups received basic swimming training, but the training content in the experimental group was organized with educational games. The TGDM-II (Test of Gross Motor Development-2) gross motor skill test was applied to observe the changes in the motor skills of the participants before and after the training. The test results were analyzed using statistical tests in the SPSS 25.0 package program. Since the normality analysis showed that the data were not normally distributed, non-parametric tests such as the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and the Mann-Whitney U test were applied. As a result of the findings, significant differences were found within the control group in terms of locomotor skill scores between the pre- and post-tests. Similarly, the same situation was observed in the experimental group. When looking at the pre- and post-test scores of locomotor skills between the groups, no significant differences were found between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group and the experimental group. In terms of object control skills, significant differences were observed within the control group between the pre- and post-tests, while these differences were not observed in the experimental group. When looking at the pre- and post-test scores of object control skills between the groups, no significant differences were found between the pre-test scores of the control group and the experimental group, while significant differences were found between the post-test scores. When examining the total skill scores, significant differences were found within the control group in both the pre- and post-tests. In the experimental group, significant differences were observed only in the post-test. When looking at the pre- and post-test scores of total skills between the groups, no significant differences were found between the pre-test and post-test scores of the control group and the experimental group. Keywords: Basic swimming education, ages 4-6, gross motor skills, TGMD-2.