Chores aren’t bores; they’re a way to play
By changing the way we present household tasks – not as mundane, boring jobs that need to be done, but as opportunities for playful activity – they can instead be seen as a way to spend quality time with our children. This is especially useful for busy working parents for whom chores and playtime with their children have to exist in the same concentrated period of time.
The key to integrating chores into playtime is to stop thinking that household tasks have to be isolated, parental tasks.
Ways to play and chores for preschoolers
Here are some points to keep in mind when trying to get preschoolers involved in chores:
Make the chore irresistible and fun with a game, a song or a challenge.
Keep it playful.
Change the nature of the chore-play regularly to keep it fresh.
Don’t feel you have to involve your child in every chore.
Don’t expect perfection.
Always supervise.
Use green (and safe) cleaning products around children.
Be encouraging.
Show how pleased you are every time a chore is completed (even if it is not done perfectly).
Always say thank you for helping.
The most common question that parents ask is what exactly is the appropriate age to a) introduce chores, and b) what kinds of chores should children actually be able to complete at specific ages.
If you think of chores as a way to play then you can introduce them from as early an age as you like. As for the actual complexity of the chore, well, of course that will depend on the age of your child, their specific abilities, their dexterity, their maturity and the set up of your home. But by making a job a game, in fact all areas of chore-work can be happily accessed by children as young as two. In some cases they will, of course, simply be playing alongside you while you complete the task, but on occasion they may be able to contribute to the actual outcome in some way. The point is, by making chores fun the domestic tasks get done, your child is happily involved, they don’t learn that chores are tedious and something to avoid at all costs, they practise important life skills and numerous other skills with you through playful activity and you get some quality time together.
Below, I’ve listed the main household chores. I’ve grouped them according to how frequently they might need to be carried out, but, of course, this varies in every home.
Everyday – or most frequent – chores:
Laundry
Dusting
Vacuuming
Sweeping
Washing up
Dishwasher loading/unloading
Setting and clearing the table
Making beds
Changing sheets
Cleaning the bathroom
Tidying up
Putting rubbish in the bin
Picking up after oneself
Putting groceries away
Cooking
Less-frequent chores:
Cleaning the car
Defrosting the freezer
Washing windows
Garden upkeep
Sorting out clothes – outgrown and worn-out
The Mary Poppins Approach
What better way to explain chores as a way to play than to refer to the wonderful cleaning queen and playful governess, Mary Poppins. Her take on how to get the chores done is brilliantly illustrated in the song ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ in which she tells us, ‘In every job that must be done, there’s an element of fun. You find the fun and – SNAP – the job’s a game. And every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake, a lark and a spree.’
So here are some adult-led spoonfuls of sugar – or rather, playful ideas – to help any household chore become a way to play for you and your little one. Remember to change the nature of the game or challenge every so often to keep it fresh for you and irresistible to your child. Of course, this is not a finite list – I hope these ideas will inspire you to think up your own playful ways to make chores less of a bore.
Laundry
Complete the laundry chores, with your child helping as best they can alongside, in the manner of robots or fairies, magicians or spies.
Make a game of dividing the laundry into piles of different types – colourful, whites and pales – ready for the machine.
Play the colour game – as you sort the laundry, give your child one particular colour to search for and collect.
Set playful challenges for you and your child – how fast can we sort the washing or load the machine? Can we do it faster than last time?
Play ‘What am I?’ – a great describing game as you sort, hang out or fold the clean laundry. ‘I am blue. I have buttons. I have long sleeves. I have cuffs. I belong to Daddy. What am I?’
Try the match the socks game. You could add to the challenge by seeing how quickly your child can complete the task, or by playing a song from a favourite CD or listening to a song on the radio to see how many clean and dry socks they can match before it finishes.
Sing a laundry-themed song to ‘move the job along’ like Mary Poppins does. You could sing ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, but here are a couple of other suggestions to get you started and add some variety!
On a cold and frosty morning
(To the tune of Here we go round the Mulberry Bush)
This is the way we sort the clothes, sort the clothes, sort the clothes*
This is the way we sort the clothes
On a cold and frosty morning.
See them go round in the washing machine, the washing machine, the washing machine
See them go round in the washing machine
On a cold and frosty morning.
To be washed
Mummy’s found some blue trousers, blue trousers, blue trousers
Mummy’s found some blue trousers – to be washed.
Daisy’s found a white towel, white towel, white towel
Daisy’s found a white towel – to be washed
Set up a mini laundrette in the kitchen while the washing machine does its thing. Most small children will love to handwash dolls’ clothes in a bowl of warm soapy water. Put an old towel down underneath to prevent slips.
Let them have fun folding things – small towels, pillowcases and tea towels are great items with which to practise. Just don’t expect precision corners.
Secure a length of string at each end, to two chairs perhaps, at your child’s shoulder height and let them peg out the socks.
Get to know some laundry-themed stories to recount to each other while doing the laundry. Or your little one could ‘read’ you the story from the book itself.
Laundry-themed picture books
Here are a few of our favourites:
Mrs Mopple’s Washing Line – Anita Hewett
Bare Bear – Miriam Moss and Mary McQuillan
Pants – Giles Andreae and Nick Sharratt
The Queen’s Knickers – Nicholas Allan
The Smartest Giant in Town – Julia Donaldson
Paddington: Trouble at the Laundrette – Michael Bond
Mrs Lather’s Laundry – Allan Ahlberg
Dusting
Children, armed with their own cloth or feather duster, will love following you around, copying you while you dust. Best not to put any cleaning product on their cloth though.
Pop on a motivational tune and see if you can finish the room by the end of the song. Here are a few of our favourites:
‘Heroes’ – David Bowie
‘Take on Me’ – a-ha
‘Jump Around’ – House of Pain
‘Give it Up’ – KC and the Sunshine Band
‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ – Queen
Try singing this song while dusting a room; it’s adapted from the Disney film
Peter Pan: We’re following the leader
We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader
We’re following the leader wherever (s)he may be
We’re gonna dust the table, the table, the table*
We’re gonna dust the table wherever it may be
Vacuuming
When they were very young, my own children were scared of our vacuum cleaner – so much so that one of us used to vacuum while the other took them out for a walk! But some children like the noise and some babies are even soothed by it so much that they fall asleep to it, apparently.
To make the vacuum cleaner more appealing, why not turn it into a hungry, crumb-eating creature by giving it a face. Just add some googly eyes, paper or craft foam brows, ears and nose with some double-sided sticky tape (or Blu-tack for less permanence) just where your little one thinks they should go.
Every time the vacuum cleaner needs to come out, say it’s time for another ‘Adventure with the Crumb-Eating Creature’. The children will love helping with the story (shouting it out above the noise) about where it needs to go to today, what it will eat, and how it has to go to bed when the cleaning is finished.
You can buy a range of toy vacuum cleaners (these are very popular with most preschoolers), but if you don’t want that expense you could simply raid the recycling box for tubes and boxes and, sticking them together with some heavy duty gaffer tape, help your child make their own mini vacuum cleaner. Your children will love copying you with their own scaled-down, lightweight model. I have also seen some children as young as four using a hand-held dust-buster most effectively. If you feel your child is up to this, let them have a go (closely supervising them, of course) and enjoy the fact that they will actually be effectively contributing to getting the carpet clean. (For other details of junk modelling using recycled materials, see here.)
Sweeping the floor
Sweeping is actually quite a complex task that requires a great deal of dexterity and coordination. It’s unlikely that a child under five will be able to achieve what we might call effective sweeping but this doesn’t mean it can’t be a way to play. Usually, soon after the sweeping action is explored, young children drift to playing with the broom in an altogether different way; I am of course talking about using it like a horse, or a balance beam, or if they’ve had any exposure to witches in stories such as Julia Donaldson’s brilliant Room on the Broom – they’ll be flying round the room on it. Or maybe they’ve just seen you being particularly playful with your broom at some point, and are just copying what they’ve seen.
Invest in a miniature (but effective) broom and dustpan set – otherwise you’ll end up tussling over ownership far more than sweeping or playing. Recently I read that just a few years ago, Montessori teachers in the US – who promote sweeping as an important developmental play opportunity for young children – had great difficulty in finding miniature, non-gendered brooms in natural materials – in fact they worked with a manufacturer to enable the making of such ‘specialist’ brooms to be continued. It’s amazing how many good-quality miniature sets are available now, and it means that if your child insists on using the grown-up version, you can still carry out the task effectively while your child is copying you, albeit with equipment on a scale that makes you feel like a giant.
You can have fun mixing up the order of the three parts of the sweeping process by using a song to help you do it right while you and your little one sweep:
Sweep the dirt (sung to the tune of ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’)
Sweep the dirt into a pile, to a pile (repeat)
Sweep and sweep and sweep and sweep
Sweep the dirt into a pile, into a pile.
Push the pile into the pan, into the pan (repeat)
Push and push and push and push
Push the pile into the pan, into the pan.
Tip the dirt into the bin, into the bin (repeat)
Tip and tip and tip and tip
Tip the dirt into the bin, into the bin.
Remember to give praise and tell your child what a good helper they are – even though you may well have to re-do the sweeping they attempted after they’ve scooted off to do something else. They’ll definitely be back for more, and gradually their sweeping (and broom-flying) skills will improve.
Washing up
Washing up is often seen as one of the more tedious chores for grown ups. Despite this, young children seem to find it a real treat. When I asked via social media which chores are children’s favourites, washing up came out on top. Of course we can’t get our under-fives to scour pans, safely wash cutlery or clean the best china, but they will easily and enthusiastically manage plastic plates, bowls, cups and wooden utensils.
Invest in an extra washing-up bowl, washing-up brush and a sponge or cloth so that they can sometimes wash up as you do. Just set it all up nearby – either on the floor (with an old towel underneath to prevent slips) or on a low table that they can stand at. You won’t be able to rely on their skill at cleaning, but you can rely on their skill at playing. To them, washing up means a sensory play opportunity; they’ll splish-and-splash in the warm, bubbly water for ages – pouring and swirling, scooping and wiping. And if some of the lunch things get clean in the process – that’s a bonus! They’ll still think they’re washing up whether the items are spotless or not. Young children are more likely to stay interested in washing up if you keep it as an occasional activity that’s different to other water-based play. Offering it as a grown-up job, to help you, is all part of its irresistible charm, it seems.
Dishwasher
If your household has a dishwasher, you can still get your little one to help with the dishes; they’ll happily help load it with the dirty stuff or empty it of its sparkly clean contents as long as you make the process fun.
Set yourselves a challenge – can the dishwasher be emptied before a certain song on the radio finishes? Your toddler could help by collecting the non-breakables.
Play a spotting game where
all of the dirty or clean cups, then forks, then bowls and so on are identified by the children and put away by the grown up. Do this against the clock and you’ll have a really fun game on your hands.
Setting and clearing the table
Setting the table can be a fun activity for young children. When my daughter turned four, she went through a phase of turning our dining table into a restaurant every time I asked if anyone would like to do the job. She would make a central flower arrangement, menus, place cards – the lot! This became quite time-consuming in the end, so I had to make sure I asked at least twenty minutes before the meal was actually ready, but it did mean that she happily, and creatively, took on the task.
Make a ‘let’s pretend’ cafe:
Make some personalised placemats; trace around the shapes of where the plate, cup and cutlery should go if your children find it hard to remember. Decorate large paper doilies or A4 paper for temporary mats (or if you have access to a laminator, cover them and they will last longer and be wipeable) with drawings, stickers or pictures cut from magazines.
It’s fun and useful for young children to remember where everybody sits and to think about what the family needs to use during the meal. If they’re feeling particularly creative, let them make place cards, or a menu, or whatever they wish, to create the desired ambiance.
Mealtime rituals and routines differ vastly from family to family, but quite commonly the end of the meal is often the time when children seem to magically disappear and the grown ups are left with the devastation that is the post-dinner dining table. You can occasionally involve the little ones in clearing up the mess with some fun and games, however. For example:
Clear the table with your children helping as best they can alongside, in the manner of robots or fairies, magicians or monsters.
Make some attractive and tactile ‘job stones’ to pick out of a cloth bag to allocate tasks. These are easy to make by painting, drawing or sticking pictures from magazines onto smallish pebbles with PVA glue. Each stone’s picture should represent one of the jobs required to clear the table, for example: collect cups, cutlery, plates and bowls, wipe the table and sweep the floor. The aim is to empty the bag of stones – and complete the jobs – before going off to play something else.
Offer an incentive of a game or some other playful activity at the table once it has been cleared. This can be a real motivator for children of all ages; it’s an example of the When/Then technique (see here).
Making beds
Making the beds is a daily chore that usually takes us grown ups mere seconds in the modern world of duvets, however, small children can find bedding incredibly cumbersome and heavy to manoeuvre. You can still include them, though, by allocating them aspects of the job that they can manage.
