The examination of the effects of interactive reading activities based on Leo Lionni's books on the philosophical behaviors and attitudes of preschool children

A quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test, experimental and control groups was used to examine the effect of interactive book reading activities based on Leo Lionni's books on the philosophical behaviors and attitudes of preschool children. The study included a total of 33 children attending the kindergarten class of Atatürk Primary School in Esenyurt District of Istanbul, with 15 in the experimental group and 18 in the control group. To collect data, a personal information form and the "Checklist for Identifying Philosophical Attitudes and Behaviors of Preschool Children" developed by Dirican and Deniz (2017) were used. Children in the experimental group participated in interactive book reading activities using Leo Lionni's books, conducted by the researcher once a week for 10 weeks. No intervention was applied to the control group during the study; however, an activity session was held with them after data collection for ethical reasons. Differences in philosophical behaviors and attitudes between the pre-test and post-test scores of children in the experimental and control groups were analyzed using the Pearson Chi-Square test, and differences within the experimental group were analyzed using the McNemar test. The analysis showed that children in both the experimental and control groups had largely similar baseline levels in terms of philosophical behaviors and attitudes. However, significant differences were observed in the post-test results in favor of the experimental group. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that interactive book reading activities using Leo Lionni's books positively influenced the experimental group's abilities such as noticing and asking about the meanings of new words they heard, expressing their rights, acknowledging others' rights, asking questions about what they listened to, enjoying asking about topics they are curious about, and using words of appreciation and praise for others.