Five ways to make cleaning fun for your kids
No one enjoys doing household chores but if you make cleaning more fun, your children will be more eager to help.
Does your child turn their nose up and run away when you mention brooms, mops, and dishcloths? It’s fun for your kids to clean the house if you think of ways to make it fun for them. There is a lot of cleaning that needs to be done around the house. Who can’t use some help? For what reason did we have kids in the first place? To make them do things we don’t want to do ourselves, right? Humour aside, letting kids help clean up is actually a great way to boost their self-esteem, improve their fitness levels, and teach them the importance of taking care of their belongings.
Here are five ways you can make cleaning fun for your kids:
Beat the time
Set a timer, and then set a goal for your kids to finish a task before the timer goes off. Challenge them by saying something like, “There are 10 books here. Can you get them to put away in one minute? Go!” “Can you put the laundry away in five minutes?”, and so on.
Create some friendly competition
A lot of toys and two or more kids? Give each child a bucket with no toys in it, set a timer for a minute, and see who can get the most. How quickly the floor gets cleaned will surprise you.
Make a treasure map
Start in one part of the house with a map that has short, simple instructions on it. The map might say, “Make the bed, clean the bathroom, put the dirty clothes in the laundry bin.” Afterwards, the child will find another map to another instruction (placed on the laundry bin). you get the gist.
Find out which chores they prefer
If your seven-year-old daughter likes to wash dishes, show her how to do it right and encourage her to do it more often. Lifelong skills are being learned even when you must wash a dish again. You can let your son do the dusting if he prefers dusting over dishes.
Be clear about what you want to be done
Let your kids know what they’ll get when they’re done, and make it worth their while. You don’t have to always use bribery and corruption, but children are more eager if they know there is a reward in waiting. It can be something as simple as a new star on their sticker chart, or the choice of picking a flower from the garden.
