It’s Spring Cleaning Time!

It can be very challenging to get children to participate in cleaning whether it’s their room on a normal basis or the house during a big spring cleaning. One great way to entice children to clean is to make a game out of it. Obviously there isn’t always time for this method but when given the opportunity, children can actually enjoy cleaning their rooms.

One game idea that is mentioned on babycenter.com is to turn cleaning into flashlight tag/I spy. The grownup grabs a flashlight for each person and turns off all the lights. Then the first person says “I spy”…and you name a specific toy and say run and grab it! The person without the flashlight runs to get the toy. Take turns doing this until the room is picked up and the toys are back in their place.

Another game idea is to play a child version of “Name That Tune”. But, instead of naming a tune you ask them to name how many toys they can pick up in a certain amount of time. Each round they can try and beat their previous score. You can even make a finish line and a prize for crossing the finish line. This works especially well if there are multiple children competing although the parent/nanny can always participate as well.

There are other less involved ways to intrigue a child such as to put all their chores into a hat and make it a mystery as to what chore they might get. Lastly, there is always the classic “Barney clean up” song or a star chart with a reward once a certain number of chores are reached. No matter which game you think will cater more toward the child, it is always more fun to play than to work!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Raleigh Nanny & Babysitting Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.