The effects of science activities on preschool children's environmental consciousness

Preschool days are the times that many of the skills and habits to be used for entire life are founded and the personality takes shape. In this period which is critical for the development of the child, environmental education which starting with the recognition, like and conservation gains of the environment is the first step in gaining environmental consciousness. Science activities that enable children to get familiar and commune with the environment make it possible to build the concept of the environment on firm foundations, gain essential knowledge, attitude and behavior, and retain them throughout the life. From this point forth, the goal of this study is to determine the effect of preschool science activities on preschool children to gain environmental consciousness. A subject group for the study is formed from 60 children who are getting preschool education in Seyhun Aytaç Preschool in Aksaray center and 48-60 months of age. Pretest, applications and posttest applied on both control and experimental groups in accordance with the pretest posttest control group design. Science activities that are planned according to the outcomes updated by the researcher are applied to the experiment group. Activities designated for the same outcomes in the Turkish Directorate of National Education (M.E.B.) Preschool Education Curriculum of 2013 was applied by the classroom teacher on the control group. A test development study aiming to determine the environmental consciousness of the preschool children was also done in the scope of this study. This "Environmental Consciousness Test" was also applied to 105 preschool children in several state kindergarten schools in Aksaray district to determine validity and reliability. Expert opinions were asked for scope validity, internal consistency was queried, and Cronbach Alfa value was calculated 0.75. The test found reliable and valid and applied to the study group as pre- and posttest. A t-test was used on dependent groups for comparing the pretest and the posttest scores of the groups, and t-test was also applied to the independent groups for comparing control and experiment groups to analyze the obtained data. When the pretest and posttest scores are evaluated, it was determined that the mean scores of the posttests were increased for experiment and control groups. Along with this, a significant difference in the mean scores in favor of the experiment group was also identified between the experiment group that the science activities were applied to constitute environmental consciousness and the control group that the activities in Turkish Directorate of National Education (M.E.B.) Preschool Education Curriculum was utilized. Moreover, it was also determined that the significant difference between mean scores has a wide effect size. These results indicate that the science activities to constitute environmental consciousness for preschool children has more succesful effects than the activities in the official curriculum.