Investigation of the geometric design creating processes of 60-72 months old pre-school children

The purpose of this research is to describe the geometric design creation processes of 60–72-month-old preschool children and to identify and examine their discourses related to reasoning. The design of the research was determined as a case study, which is one of the qualitative research approaches. Within the scope of the research, geometric design creation activities prepared by the researcher were carried out with thirteen children attending preschool education for ten weeks. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted individually after the activity implementations. The collected data were analyzed using content analysis method. Two sub-objectives were determined within the scope of the research: The first sub-objective is "How do children participating in the research describe the process of geometric design creation?", and the second sub-objective is "What are the reasoning expressions used by children participating in the research in the process of geometric design creation?" It is in the form. The analyses conducted for the first sub-objective of the research revealed that children primarily utilize visual recognition skills in learning geometric shapes and objects. It was observed that, there are certain deficiencies in their knowledge related to some geometric concepts. It was found that children can effectively employ spatial thinking skills in the design development and structuring process. Furthermore, a diversification in their explanation strategies was noted during this process. As a result of the analyses conducted for the second sub-objective of the research, it was determined that children include deductive, inductive, relational, causal, proportional, probabilistic, flawed, visual-spatial, and mathematical reasoning expressions in their discourse during the process of geometric design creation. When examining the reasoning expressions of children, it was found that they differ individually from each other. While some children in the study group include all types of reasoning obtained as a result of the analyses conducted within the scope of the research in their expressions, it was observed that some children have expressions related to certain reasoning skills (deductive, relational, causal, flawed, etc.)