THE EFFECT OF RHYTHM EDUCATION PROGRAM DESIGNED FOR 5-6 YEAR OLD CHILDREN ON THEIR RHYTHMIC SENSE DEVELOPMENT

Today music, an area of education, is an important influence in an individual’s personaldevelopment and has an effect in terms of socializing skills in each individual. Children receive music education because music is an important element in developing a healthy individual.During pre-school (5-6 year olds) listening, paying attention to sounds and giving appropriatereactions are important points in music education. Due to this, developing education programsrelated to rhythm, one of the basic music elements, are important. Based on this, the purposeof this research was to observe if “Rhythm Education Program” when tested on 5-6 yearolds in pre-school, had an effect on their rhythmic sense development. With this purpose anexperimental design, “Rhythm Education Program”, developed by the researcher was used totest the effect of rhythmic development on 5-6 year olds pre-school children. They were preandpost tested. For this research 30 children were involved. They were divided into 2 groupsof 15 children. Children in the second group were those when tested with questions made bythe researcher had higher scores than children in the first group. Children in the first groupwere those who achieved lower scores than children in the second group. Children in the firstgroup received the “Rhythm Education Program” everyday for six weeks. In this program playsincluding rhythm patterns, developed by the researcher, were applied. According to the resultsobtained from this research, rhythmic performances of the children in the first group involved inthe “Rhythm Education Program” had reached the level of the second group not involved in theeducational program by the end of this research. “Rhythm Education Program” therefore hasan effect on and has been found to improve rhythmic sense development in children.