The place and importance of play for pschomotor development of six-years age-group nursery students

Early childhood education is gaining increasing importance during the lastyears in our country. The realisation of importance of early stages of life in childs?development is among to the major reasons for this. Children makes importantprogress starting early years of their life in cognitive, sensorial, pschomotor, idendityand moral abilities. It is a crucial step for the later child life that the parents and caretakers should be aware of the childs? abilities at this early stages and they shouldtake necessary actions if they notice any performance disabilities.Play is among to the most important activities of early childhood period. Play,represents a method of teaching in this period. Play has important contribution to thecognitive, sensorial and pschomotor performance of the children. In this study, theimpact of play on the childrens? pschomotor performance and performance of big andsmall muscles are investigated.Six years age-group nursery children attaneting to the private nurseries inElazig city center in 2005-2006 term were considered for this study. A total of 46 sixyears old nursery student attenting to the Firat Nursery School presents the sampleof this study.Pre-post test control group model was utilized in this study. The pre-test andpost-tests involved motor performance tests. A total of 30 sessions, each being 60minute, were performed to the study group. Statistical analysis of data wereperformed by the use of paired t tets and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests for groupcomparisons.The main findings of this research can be summarized as:It was determined that the applied games privided beneficial impacts on the-balance, ball catching, ball thrawing, jumbing, picking up the ball from theground and running performances of the study group.Except the running performance of the boys, all the other performances was-determined to be improved through play.Among to the girls, all performances other than balance and pace was-improved through the game.Key words: Early Childhood Education, Play, Pschomotor Performance,Performance Training