The establishment of physical activity (PA) routines in childhood is critical to form life-long PA habits. Children are motivated for activities that they enjoy but research is scarce on motivational factors for PA in children younger than eight years old. PURPOSE: To explore why children enjoy or do not enjoy physical activities to gather their underlying motivation. Additionally, physical activity and perceived motor competency data were collected to describe the participants. METHODS: A mixed-methods study design was employed. Participants (n=16) were 2nd and 3rd grade students at two YMCA afterschool programs. Each child wore an accelerometer on the right hip for seven consecutive days and data were converted to min in PA intensities. They also completed Harter’s perceived motor competency survey and took part in focus groups. There were two 2nd grade and two 3rd grade focus groups, which consisted of 3-5 participants each. Descriptive analyses were performed on PA and perceived motor competency data. Focus group data underwent thematic analysis using an inductive approach. RESULTS: PA data revealed that the majority of participants (57%) met PA recommendation with an average of 63.8±25.4 minutes of moderate to vigorous PA per day. Additionally, the average perceived motor competency score was 3.0±0.6 (out of 4). Information from the focus groups was used to create four over-arching themes which included 1) PA is sport, 2) social influence, 3) perceived competence, and 4) PA characteristics. Within the social influence theme, peers, parents, siblings, and gender norms appear to make important contributions to this theme. The PA characteristics theme included roughness and danger, movement and action, teammates and competition (enjoyment only), and rules (unenjoyment only). It appears that the social influence, perceived competence, and PA characteristics had overlap on one another, suggesting perhaps all three have a reciprocal interaction that may relate to the enjoyment or unenjoyment of physical activities. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest exposing children early to wide varieties of physical activities may help minimize activities they dislike and build their perceived competence and social bonds, which may be crucial to establishing and continuing PA behaviors.