How To Make Chores Fun for Kids
If you’ve ever been frustrated about a lack of assistance around the house, help is on the way! There are plenty of creative strategies you can use to make chores enjoyable for kids.
Creative Ways To Make Chore-Time Fun
Scholastic suggests motivating your children with a point and reward system when figuring out how to make chores fun for kids. First, create a list of tasks for each child to accomplish so that expectations are clear. When a child completes one of their tasks, they get to place a sticker on the list. Whoever has the most stickers earns the Helper of the Week award.
Another idea: each week, you can appoint someone as “Inspector D. Clutter.” You can give them a plastic badge and a box or laundry basket. That person is charged with collecting items that aren’t where they should be and putting them in “clutter jail” (the box or basket). To get the item back, the owner must perform a task. You can include parents in this rule as well!
AdventureBook.com also contributes helpful ideas on how to make chores fun for kids. One is to put together a playlist of songs your family enjoys, playing it when it’s time to get the job done. You can also pretend that the broom is a microphone while singing along, or the vacuum cleaner is an air guitar. Although this can take a bit longer, if you get the job done while having fun, it can be a win/win situation. From time to time, add other favorite songs to your playlist to pleasantly surprise your kids!
If you don’t have time for this approach, play beat the clock, where each person has a certain time to complete a chore. Set a stopwatch, giving them a reasonable amount of time to get everything done. After you verify how much time is needed, cut off a bit of time next time, turning it into a race.
Although the beat-the-clock concept works well with many tasks, you won’t want to go this route with breakable items in your home. When you notice that your children are missing some spots when cleaning to beat the clock, that’s a sign that they may not be assigned enough time. At that point, we recommend adjusting the timeframe as needed.
Horizon Makes Learning New Skills Fun
Sometimes, children may hesitate to perform chores because they aren’t sure how to do them the right way. That’s why, at Horizon, we make an effort to teach kids how to do chores, infusing the experience with fun!
At our Old Brooklyn location, for instance, we taught toddlers how to do laundry while playing fun music in the background. They learned how to wash clothes in water, wring out the water, and then put items securely on a line to dry — all while bouncing along to the kid-friendly beats.
