The purpose of the current study is to determine the effect of talking drawings on Turkish preschool children’s mental models of the water cycle. The study was conducted in the city of Kastamonu, located in the north-west of Turkey. A total of 40 five-year-old preschool children participated in the study in the spring term of the 2015-2016 school year. Within the context of the study, prior to the initiation of the experimental process, the children were asked to illustrate their opinions about the water cycle through drawings. At the end of the experimental process, they were asked once more to draw pictures to depict the water cycle, after which the code differences between the drawings were determined. At the end of the study it was found that, before the initiation of the experimental process, the codes used by the children most frequently within the framework of the water cycle could be presented in rank order as follows: rain (f = 42, 95.4%), cloud (f = 36, 81.8%) and human (f = 24, 54.5%); after the completion of the experimental process, the same rank order was found: rain (f = 39, 88.6%), cloud (f = 39, 88.6%) and human (f = 28, 63.6%). On the basis of the post-test results, the Mann-Whitney U Test was conducted and revealed a significant difference in the children’s drawings in favor of the experimental group (U = 28, z = -5.531, p = 0.000, r = 0.8). Thus, it was concluded that the technique of talking drawings had a positive effect on the children’s mental models of the water cycle. In light of this finding, it can be stressed that the technique of talking drawings built on both student-student and teacher-student dialogues, and we recommend that a great emphasis be placed on group work in early childhood science education. 

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