Leisure Time Activities and Interests of Elementary School Children

The main objective of this research was to investigate the leisure time activities of elementary school children. This paper investigates the way in which these activities are grouped and their expression. In addition to this, it examined the existence of any difference between these grouped activities in relation to respondents’ gender and school achievements, as well as to their relationship with the children's opinion of their parents’ interest in how they spend their leisure time. For this purpose, an instrument has been designed consisting of 22 items of Likert-type (α = .69) which was used for a sample of 246 students of both genders (121 male and 125 female) from 4th and 5th grade (96 from 4th and 150 from 5th grade) from elementary schools in Vranje and Nis. Through factor analysis based on The Guttman-Kaiser Criterion and with the analysis of loadings of certain items, five factors have been identified and named as follows: organized extracurricular activities, home-related activities, computer-related activities, pastime, reality shows watching. The discovered differences in the expression of these groups of activities proved to be statistically significant. The results of t-test indicated that girls engage more in activities at home, while boys rest more. The ANOVA results showed differences in the expression of activities done at home, as well as organized extracurricular activities between students with varying academic achievements. In the end, the results showed that as parents get less interested in the way their children spend their leisure time, their children engage more in organized extracurricular activities, activities carried out at home, and watching sports, resting, and using computers.