Analyzing the practices of project approaches in preschool education in terms of basic scientific process skills

In this study, it was aimed to determine if the children were able to use basic scientific process skills in implementation of project approach in preschool education. For this purpose, the 6 projects developed by the researcher as good examples and the researcher guided teachers to carry out these projects at 4-5-6 age groups in Foça Municipality Preschool. In the study, the data acquired by document reviews of “3600 photographs, videos, pictures, conceptual relations, graphics, experiments, games, creative artworks, questionnaires, albums, parents’ involvement activities, presentation documents” and other similar documents that are gathered in beginning phase, development phase and presentation phase of the projects. The data were analyzed by content analysis in terms of basic scientific process skills. The findings obtained from the projects of “ball, plastic bag, paper, bread, clock and water” showed that children use each of the basic scientific process skills lots of time in proportion to their age groups. Also, it can be said that project studies in which preschool children are directly involved in supported them to use basic scientific process skills and based on this, the implementation of project approach included use of basic scientific process skills. Taking into account that acquiring basic scientific process skills at early ages is a prerequisite for the gaining integrated process skills in the future, it is advised frequently benefiting from implementation of project approaches containing each of basic scientific process skills