The Effects of Preschool Plays on Children’s Mental and Social Skills in Preschool Centers of Shiraz

Today, novel educational methods are being developed all over the world; among all those methods, game-based ones are the best because these games are often welcomed by learners. The aim of this study was to explain the effect of preschool games on mental and social skills of children in preschool centers.

This study is a semi-experimental research consists of control and experimental groups. The method was performed by Pretest-posttest method. The statistical population was 8467 preschool children in 5-6 years of old. 120 children were selected by random clustering sampling method, then they were categorized in two groups: experimental and control. After equalization of groups, in order to assess the mental skills of children Bender Gestalts visual-motional pretest were implemented on all chosen children who were 60 boys and 60 girls. And Matson's Social Skills Questionnaire were given to teachers to measure social skills of children. Then from each group 30 participants were randomly assigned as an experimental group and 30 participants were chosen as a control group. Afterwards Games have been taught to experimental group in two months (two 90-minutes-sessions per week). When games have been learnt, the tests were repeated again, then the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).

Findings of the research showed that the effect of independent variable intervention (preschool games) was 0.16, that meant 16% of the variance of post-test scores of mental skills of children was due to preschool games. This asserts that preschool games have increased the mental skills of preschool children. Also, the effect of independent variable intervention (preschool games) was 0.28, i.e., 28% of the variance of post-test scores of social skills of children was due to the effect of preschool games. This indicated that preschool games have improved social skills children.

It can be said that preschool games have a capacity to improve mental and social skills of children. Accordingly, preschool games should be designed and implemented in line with developing these two goals.