Abstract:

Preschool education is aimed to provide preschool children with rich and valuable experiences. Children’s fine motor development is required for their growth and academic success. This development is also critical to gain preliminary competencies for early literacy. The purpose of this study was to analyze the fine motor development and early literacy skill levels of preschool children. For this purpose, the relational screening model was chosen. Eighty preschool children were selected from the middle socio-economic class. Fine motor development test and early literacy assessment form was used to collect data. Results indicated that preschool children with inadequate early literacy levels had lower fine motor development scores while children with instructional early literacy levels had better fine motor development scores (p.≤.05). Besides, there was a positive significant correlation (p.≤.05) between fine motor development and print awareness sub-dimension, and fine motor development and expressive and receptive language sub-dimension of early literacy. According to these results, both print awareness, and expressive and receptive language sub-dimensions of early literacy had moderate level correlation (r=.54 and r=.44) with fine motor development. It can be said that children with better fine motor development also have better early literacy skills as well.

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