Abstract:

It is known that the preschool period is a critical period in the development of mathematical reasoning skills. Preschool curriculums which are implemented to support the development of these skills in the early period has a great importance. Considering that mathematical reasoning includes notional concepts for preschool children, it can be thought that Montessori Method, which works with concrete materials in the instructional process, will be effective for the development of related skills. The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of mathematics instruction supported with Montessori materials on early mathematical reasoning skills. In this experimental study, pre and post-test control group design was applied. It is carried out on 30 preschool kids, 15 of whom are involved in experimental group and 15 of whom are involved in the control group. This implementation is carried out with the mathematics instruction supported with Montessori materials in the experimental group, and the mathematics instruction based on Preschool Curriculum (2013) in the control group. “Evaluation Tool of Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills” was used as a pre and posttest, and the data was collected by Mann Whitney U Test considering gender and reasoning skills variants. In the data obtained, there was a significant correlation between the performance of the kids’ mathematical reasoning skills in the experimental and control group in favour of experimental group. Besides, it is observed that there was not any correlation between the performance of the kids’ early mathematical reasoning skills in the control and experimental group based on the gender variant.