A Study on the Relationship between Six-Year-Old Children’s Creativity and Mathematical Ability

Creativity is defined as a totality of processes and a way of attitude and behavior which exists in every child to a different extent. Every child is creative owing to their nature and their perspective on life. Offering children creative environments, especially during early childhood education, affects their mathematical abilities and supports their creative thinking. The aim of this study is to investigate whether children’s creativity and mathematical abilities vary with respect to their gender and whether there is a relationship between creativity and mathematical ability. The study population includes six-year-old children attending independent kindergartens affiliated with the Ministry of Education in Ankara city center. The sampling consists of 80 six-year-old children in total, attending Sevgi Kindergarten, which was chosen randomly from among the kindergartens in the population. Data were gathered by using several instruments. These included a “General Information Form” prepared by the researchers to gather information about the children, “Torrance Test of Creative Thinking – Figural Form A” to assess children’s creativity, and the “Test of Early Mathematics Ability- 3 (TEMA-3)” to assess children’s mathematical ability. While t-test was used to determine whether children’s creativity and mathematics scores differed with respect to gender, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze whether there was a relationship between creativity and mathematical ability. The results showed that children’s creativity scores differed significantly with respect to gender, but not their mathematics scores. Also, it has been found that there is no relationship between the creativity and mathematical ability of children.