Play Factor in Children's Cultural Development Children's Games Played Around Cankiri

Playing is not only a benefit for children's psychological and social developments, but also a physiological need: Therefore, playing is a necessity for children. For this reason, children settle down to play whenever they need it, regardless of the convenience of environment or the moment. They never search "spare time" for playing. For edults, on the other hand, children should play only if they are idle. Unfortunately, this judgment is based on the idea assuming that "playing is a purposeless act" or "it is nothing but a waste of time". Pedagogues took a look at the different aspects of this phenomenon and realized that all children have to identify the environment and the objects around them soon after they are born and they actually owe playing for most of their motor developments and skills. While children play, they discern the very basic behaviors and the capabilities of movements as well as the ways of control them. In this study, some of the children's plays collected from the cankiri province are tried to introduce. In this way, some of the non-tangible cultural elements will be conserved and transferred to the future generations. This will provide a connection to the upcoming pedagogues and the educationists between the past and today, so that they can benefit from their own cultural heritage. The study of compiling children's plays took place in the cankiri province and its adjacent neighborhoods, a beautiful central Anatolian city which tries hard to conserve its rich culture. The people from whom we have collected information were all middle-aged men and women with a deep knowledge of the cultural details of the region. Children's plays which are unique to the region have been selected and included in our study as much as possible.