20 Apr Does Your Child Hate Cleaning?

How hard is it to get your child to clean up after themselves? Is the clean-up song no longer working either? Well, if this is what you are experiencing I am here to save you the headache and exhaustion. Here are some cool ways to get your child to help and enjoy cleaning up after themselves.

It’s all about fun with the little ones
Most children enjoy friendly competitions. Set a timer and play a game of “let’s see who can clean up the fastest”. Everyone wins in the end and the little one’s prize can be a favorite snack.

Implement Bubbles

Who doesn’t love bubbles? I know I do. Children love bubbles, so what cooler way to get your little helper to help clean their own little bowls and cups while you take care of the real dishes.

Footprint Stickers

Footprint stickers are a cool way to get your children to put their shoes away in places you can’t trip over them.
It is also great for helping them to learn their right foot from their left foot. To be innovative and make it fun, you can get white sticky paper 8.5×11, trace their little shoes, label each foot left and right, let them color it, and finally cut the shoe prints with safety scissors, and stick where you want their shoes to be stored.

Mini Clothing Rack

Your child may not be able to hang their own clothing yet, so a mini clothing rack would save the day. This can be made at home using PVC Pipes, 90-degree furniture grade elbows, and some measuring tape. You can also get them some little clothing hangers.

Color Coordinated Plastic Storage Totes

You can purchase different color storage totes or clear ones with color stickers to store toys. Baby dolls can go in pink, toy cars and trucks in green etc. You can store them in a closet or corner.

Cleaning games to play with your kids

Colors Game – During this game you take turns throwing the ball with your child calling out what ever color the ball lands on and that’s the colored items to get picked up. Keep choosing colors until the room is picked up!

DIY Clean-Up Velcro Dart Board Game
Kids love darts, and with this easy DIY Velcro dart board, it’s safe for all ages.
While all students love this game, it is particularly perfect for teaching your child to clean-up while having fun.  You can make several to use throughout your home.  Most importantly let your child help make the dart boards!

All you need for the dart board is:

• 5-6 yards of different colored felt
• Either different sized bowls or a compass
• Glue
• Felt or vinyl number stickers (or you can make your own with leftover pieces of felt and glue)
• A ping pong ball
• Velcro tape

First, cut your circles.  You can use different sizes of bowls to trace, or you can use a compass.

I used a similar idea, but I used 1 pushpin instead of 2 pushpins, and then tied the string around my pencil.

We cut 6 circles from 6 colors of felt, making sure to make the circles smaller every time.   We glued the largest circle on a piece of white foam board and then glued the other 5 circles right on top of each other.  If you want to help teach numbers also you can add numbers as well.

Then, we grabbed some velcro strips and glued them onto the ping pong balls.

Your dart board is ready to be enjoyed!

Here’s the final Results: A kids of all ages velcro dart board.

These few cleaning tricks will not only make your life easier, it will also teach them to be independent.