We began teaching our daughters to help out around the house when they were quite young. Now that they’re bit older, they can handle quite a few small jobs by themselves.
When introducing a new chore, my method has been to demonstrate the task, help them with it the first few times, watch them do it the next several times, and finally leave them to do it alone. It may take a couple of weeks to go through this process, and I normally continue to check behind them until I’m confident that they are doing it properly.
With that in mind, here are thirteen chores that we had our girls do when they were five-year-olds.
- Pick up and put away toys
- Make their bed
- Dust furniture
- Empty smaller trash cans into a larger one
- Clear dishes from the table after a meal
- Rinse plates at the sink (may require standing on a stool)
- Fold towels and washcloths
- Wipe baseboards
- Put away their own folded laundry
- Empty the dishwasher by stacking plates and bowls together or putting silverware away in the drawer
- Set the table
- Shake rugs outside
- Sweep the patio, sidewalk or driveway with a small broom
While it often takes longer in the beginning to have them complete these chores around the house, it eventually becomes a huge help!
Most of these tasks are on my 5-year-old's chore chart:-)
My kids are 36 and 40…I remember how they LOVED to help clean at the age of 5 until they realized they were chores.
I played …come on over if you can find time to visit with me. I'd love your company. Happy Thursday.
Wish I knew that years ago….
http://iamharriet.blogspot.com/2009/07/thirteen-richest-americans-and-some.html
I sincerely wish I'd gotten them started earlier. Now it's almost impossible to get them to do anything.
Great topic! Thanks for sharing!
Fun idea for T13. Both of my kids started with some of these chores when they were about 5 and are still doing them. They're 10 and 12 now.