Effect of creative drama based activities on problem solving and social skill levels of preschool children

This research was conducted in order to investigate the effect of Creative Drama Based Activities on Problem Solving and Social Skills levels of children continuing their preschool education. In this study, "Semi Experimental Pattern with Pretest-Posttest Control Group" was used. Two schools with a 4-6 age group preschool class which are located in Yenice, Tarsus district of Mersin, was included in the study. The study group of the research consisted of 36 morning class children 18 of which being experiments and the other 18 being control. In the study, 5-7 age Problem Solving Skills Scale and (PSSS) Preschool Social SkillsRating Scale(PSSRS) were used as a data collection tool. During the process of the study, Creative Drama-based Activities prepared by the researcher were applied to the 18 children of the experiment group 3 days a week for 5 weeks with a total of 15 workshops and 30 lesson hours. MEB pre-school education program was applied to the children in the control group. No creative drama activities were applied to the children in the control group other than the MEB program. The 5-7 age Problem Solving Skills Scale (PSSS) is anillustrated scale which was applied to each child individually by the researcher as a pretest and a posttest. Preschool Social Skills Rating Scale (PSSRS) was used to measure the social skill levels of the children. Scale forms were filled out by the preschool teachers for each child separately. In the study, to analyze the differences between the variables,Mann Whitney U test was used in comparisons between groups and Wilcoxon test was used for in-group comparisons. As a result of the study; it has been observed that creative drama-based activities had a significant effect on the increase of the problemsolving skills total scores of the children in the experiment group. There was no significant difference between the scores of the pretest and posttest, in terms of the problemsolving skills of the children in the control group. However, it has been observed that creative drama-based activities do not have a significant effect on the social skills score of the children. In terms of this variable, there was no significant difference between the children in the experiment group and the control group. Keywords: Preschool, problem solving, social skill, creative drama