The investigation of the effect of mathematics program based on project approach supported by dot cards on counting and processing skills of 6 year old children

This research was carried out to determine whether the mathematics program prepared by using Project Approach and dot cards has an effect on the counting and processing skills of children who are attending kindergarten. The population of the study consists of children attending kindergartens of Hacettepe University, which is implementing a project approach among the universities in Ankara in the 2017-2018 academic year. The sample group of the study consisted of 20 randomly selected 10 experimental and 10 randomly selected children from the 6 years age group in the researcher's class by easily accessible sampling method. In this experimental study, Form A was used to determine the mathematical abilities of the children by using of Early Mathematics Ability Test-3 Test. TEMA-3 was applied at two different times; that is as pretest and posttest. Math Project Approach and the math program prepared by dot cards were applied by the researcher for the experimental group every day of the week for four weeks. The children in the control group continued normal education flow. Shapiro Wilk test was used to analyze whether the data obtained were normally distributed or not. Analysis between two groups was performed using t test for unrelated samples. In order to compare pre-test and post-test scores in the same group, t-test for related samples was utilized. Mann Whitney U Test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Spearman-Rho Correlation Coefficient were used as well to analyze the data obtained comparatively. According to the results obtained from the study the math program prepared with project approach and dot cards applied to experimental group had significant effect on children's math ability. KeyWords: Preschool education, mathematics education, mathematics concepts, project approach, dot card