Museum education in pre-school with Alaçam Exchange Museum collection

A museum is a non-profit institution that investigates, collects, preserves, interprets, exhibits tangible and intangible heritage for the benefit of society. Open, accessible and inclusive museums support diversity and sustainability. They work ethically, professionally and with community participation by offering various experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing and communicating with the public. In this context, museums play an important social role by supporting diversity and sustainability. As a result, museums can create awareness in society and help people learn more about culture, history and art. The phenomenon of migration is one of the themes addressed in various types of museums, such as Migration Museums, City Museums, Local Museums, and Community Museums, which exhibit objects related to migration and display them in their collections. Art museums and science museums can also display them through temporary exhibitions. In this study, educational activities for preschool children aged 60-72 months were investigated in migration museums, and the aim was to prepare museum education activities for preschool children using the Alaçam Exchange Museum collection. The museum, which was opened for visitors in the district of Alaçam in the province of Samsun in 2012, exhibits a total of 240 personal belongings of immigrants who came from the region that received many immigrants during the exchange period. In this study, where the general scanning model was used, objects in the Alaçam Exchange Museum collection were examined and the group of preschool children aged 60-72 months, for whom museum education activities were prepared based on these objects, was considered. The objects and documents that make up the Alaçam Exchange Museum collection were examined using document review method, prominent objects in the museum collection were selected, and museum education activities were transformed to be suitable for preschool children by comparing them with the achievements and indicators in the Ministry of National Education Preschool Education Program.