Investigation of the effects of educational games applied to 7-8 age group students studying at primary education level on motor skills

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of educational games played on 7-8 age group students studying at primary education level on psychomotor development. The universe of this study is 7-8 age group male and female students studying at primary education level. The sample of the study is enrolled in İnkılap Primary School and Kemalpaşa Primary School in the Ulukışla district of Niğde province in the 2021-2022 academic year, who have no obstacle in attending Physical Education classes and regularly attend the school. It consists of 37 continuing students.In this study, in which the psychomotor development differences of 8-week games were examined, an experimental method with a control group and pretest-posttest pattern was applied. In the statistical tests, firstly, by looking at the Skewness and Kurtosis (skewness and kurtosis) values whether the data meet the prerequisites of the parametric tests, it was observed that the data were normally distributed since they were in the range of -1.0 +1.0. Since the data showed a normal distribution, the Independent Sample t-test was used to find the difference between the two groups as a statistical analysis of the data. Dependent Sample t-test was used for pretest and posttest analyses. The findings were evaluated at the level of 5% significance (0.05) at the 95% confidence interval.According to the results of the research, 48.6% (N=18) of the participants in the study were in the experimental group; 51.4% (N=19) are in the control group. In addition, while the average height of all participants was 129.36+/5.0; the average weight of all participants was 30.24 +/- 7.2. Significant differences were found between the pretest and posttest scores of the experimental group in the vertical rank test. Significant differences were found between the pretest and posttest scores of the control group. In the sit-reach flexibility test, there were significant differences between the pre-test and post-test values of the experimental group. Significant differences were found between the pre- and post-test values of the control group. In the standing long jump test, there were significant differences between the pretest and posttest values of the experimental group. Significant differences were found between the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group in the speed test. In the static balance test, no significant differences were found between the pre- and post-tests of the experimental group. Significant differences were found between the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group in the tennis ball throwing test. No significant differences were found in the paw strength test in both groups. In the agility test, significant differences were found between the pre- and post-tests of the experimental group. Accordingly, the post-test agility values of the participants were significantly lower than the pre-test agility values. In other words, the program applied to the experimental group had a significant effect on the agility values of the participants compared to the control group. As a result, as a result of the games played, there were significant differences in the vertical jump, long jump, sit-reach flexibility test, speed, tennis ball throwing test, standing long jump and agility tests in favor of the experimental group. Key words; primary education level, motor skills, educational game.