Investigating the place of television, computer, books and toys in kindergarten children's lives

The purpose of this study is understanding the place and significance of four important stimuli; television, computer, book and toy in lives of children in kindergarten. Fifty-one children between the age of 5 and 6 participated in the study. They were attending three private kindergartens. In the present study, the data obtained from children's drawings and interviews. First, the children were asked to picture themselves while they were with a television, computer, books and toys. Second, they were interviewed to learn about how they spend time with television, computer, books and toys. Last, the children were asked which one of these they would like to spend time with, the most. The pictures that children draw and interviews about these pictures were analyzed. The answers that children gave were categorized by content analysis. The research provided detailed information about how the children perceived televisions, books, computers and toys. Particularly, the questions of how, when, where and with whom the children spend their times when they were with these stimuli and how the children feel themselves at those times were investigated. According to the results, children mostly preferred watching cartoons in TV, playing video games in computers and reading storybooks. Also they preferred playing toys that were characters from cartoons, video games and stories. Most of the time, children had positive feelings when spent time with all of these stimuli. However, children used more powerful expressions about how they felt when they spent time with books and toys. Keywords: Early childhood, draw, television, computer, book, toy