The impact of creative drama practices on pre-school students learning about foods and achieving social cohesion skills

Pre-school education covers the critical period in which the individual shapes his life, and the knowledge, skills and behaviors gained during this period form the basis of his persolity. When we look at our eating habits in our society, there are individuals who consume unhealthy fast food foods. The Turkish society should be equipped with nutrition skills by taking precautions at an early age against inadequate and unbalanced nutrition threatening world health. Nutrition habits can be earned first by integrating the fun with the family in the school environment. At the beginning of these activities are creative drama practices. Creative drama practices are a teaching method based on group interaction and life learning. With the creative drama practices, it is possible to maintain the nutrients that need to be consumed for proper and balanced nutrition. is preparing to live by supporting the ability to express oneself, make friendships, apologize for permission, ask for help, listen to the voice of the person in question and express their feelings. The goal of the research is to determine the effects of creative drama practices on pre-school learners' learning about food and social adaptation skills. Experimental method was used in the study. Peyami Safa Primary School, which is located in the province of Tuzla in Istanbul province, constitutes 37 pre-school students in the age group of 5 years in 2017-2018. Social Skills Assessment Scale (4-6 age) developed by Avcıoğlu (2007) and Pre-School Foods Test (OÖBÖT) developed by the researcher were used as a data collection tool. The study lasted 10 weeks. The gathered data in the study were transferred to the SPSS 22 packet program and arithmetic mean, frequency, percent, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U, Wilcoxon Marked Test, Independent t-Test procedures were performed on the data. It was determined that after the creative drama applications, the first part of pre-school nutrition education test showed an increase in food drawings and the increase in the scores of the second part of the test. In the comparison group in which the food was traditionally taught, there was no significant difference in the morning breakfast meal, personal hygiene products, winter fruits and food pyramid which constitute the test, while there was no increase in the food drawings in the first part of the test and the points they got from the second part of the test. When scores of experimental and comparison groups were taken into account from the Social Skills Assessment Scale (4-6 years), there was a significant difference in the scores of the experimental group of the creative drama applications, but no significant difference was found in the comparison group. Based on the results of the research, we found that creative drama practices in pre-school nutrition education and social skills education should be preferred more than the traditional method.