The evaluation of book of John M. Hull's "God-talk with Young Children: Notes for Parents and Teachers" in terms of religious education

In this thesis, cognitive, language, religious emotion and God imagination titles, which are among the developmental areas of the child, the issue of child theology, the life of John M. Hull and the evaluation of his book are studied. Thesis consists of introduction, two sections and conclusion parts. In the introduction section, a general framework of the subject of child theology has been drawn by mentioned in detail the problem, purpose, importance and method of the study. In the first section of the study, the development areas of the child, which we mentioned above, were investigated and it was determined that the individual has an innate belief and tendency. In addition, the issue of child theology has been studied more comprehensively, it is stated that the theology in question is a child-centered approach and is based on the idea that children should be treated as original individuals who can produce their own theology and has been expressed the aims that this theology wants to achieve with the method followed. In the second section of the study, the life of Hull is discussed first, then the book was outlined in a quantitative way and finally evaluated in terms of child theology. Accordingly, it was observed that children can easily talk about God in their concrete periods with the help of the data obtained from the dialogue examples. In the conclusion part, it is emphasized that this theology can be beneficial both for religious education studies in early childhood and for the social, personal, cultural development and enrichment of vocabulary of children. Keywords Religious Education, Child Theology, Godly Play, Gift to the Child, John M. Hull