Abstract:

Play is the most important occupation that the child spends most of his time with. At the pre-school period, children learn more easily through games. In parallel with the rapid development of technology today, technological tools have also entered to our homes and the lives of children. Children spend their time in closed areas because of the fact that their parents work, and the playgrounds in big cities are scarce. Therefore, children play games with devices such as tablets, computers, and phones. The most important thing is that games that the children play must be educational and appropriate for children's development level. Games that are not suitable for the child's level of development and age, have violence and are non-educational will be harmful for the child. In this age, it is not possible to keep children away from technology so the task of educators and families is to provide the best way to benefit from the technology.

In this study, “Tom the Animal Lover”, an educational game aimed to introduce animals to pre-school children developed in 2016. The game providing information about animals and their voices for children at aged 4-5 aims to teach animals together with their voices and pictures. Unity 3D game engine was used in the design of the game. The game was designed in two dimensions in Unity 3D, and the software language was C #. The preschool period children's most enjoyable activity is play. Technology allows us to move children's play environment into digital world. In this study we designed an entertaining and educational digital game for children. As a result of observations we made after pilot application and interviews with teachers; we can say that children enjoy the game, they know the voices of animals that they did not know before and the sorting skills have improved.

Keywords:

Educational digital game, pre-school education, 4-5 aged children.