Monday, August 17, 2009

Clean up games for little ones

So as many of you know I play strange games with my children to get them to clean up. Today I discovered a new one that works fabulous that I thought I would share. I call it "minute maker", about 6:30 tonight I was looking around and wondering what happened to the house it looked like a tornado had hit. So I gathered the children around and explained the rules of the game (as I made it up). I reminded them bed time was 7pm, which I haven't been very strict about lately but I don't think they realize that. Anyway, I told them for every one item they picked up and put away they could make a line on this special game paper at the end we would add them all up and they could stay up that many extra minutes. It worked wonderful, a couple minutes into the game I realized the game needed a time limit, I decided on 1o minutes. In no time everything was picked up without me doing a thing. Jaxon had 71 lines by the time the game was over (I am sure your houses are not that messy) but be prepared.
If anyone is looking for a middle of the day game our favorite is, "pile pile". The kids each get to pick where there pile is located. Then I find a treat they like usually chocolate chips because they are small or whatever I can find around my house. I tell them they can play or lay around until I call "pile pile" then they come running they have to work to get everything in there pile put away and I put a treat in the pile every time they run to put stuff away, we continue this over and over letting them play in between until I collect more stuff and call "pile pile" again.