The Motor Creativity Skills of Children in Preschool: A Study on the Effect of Sports

Abstract

This research aims to examine the effect of sports activities on the motor creativity of children in preschool age. The research has been carried out with correlational survey model, one of the general survey models. The study group of the research consists of a total of 158 54–72-month-old children in preschool age, 79 of whom regularly do sports in the sports / activity centers in Konya province in the 2021-2022 academic year, and 79 of whom do not participate in any sports activities. "General Information Form" and, for the purpose of examining motor creativity skills, “Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement Test (TCAM)” developed by Torrance (1981) and adapted to Turkish by Karaca and Aral (2017) have been used in order to collect data for the research. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-) test to determine the normality value and the Mann Whitney U-Test in paired comparisons to examine the difference between groups have been used in the data analysis. It has been determined as a result of the research that there is a statistically significant difference in the fluency and originality sub-dimensions of TCAM while there is no statistically significant difference in the imagination sub-dimension, regarding the scores of children who participate or do not participate to sports courses.