This is the current state of my playroom…
… times that by five, and you’ll have the whole picture. Wanna see the girl’s bedroom?? No, you don’t. I promise. It doesn’t matter how much my girls clean up, how many motivating lectures I give, how much they get in trouble, how great the reward is…the clean room can only last ONE day. One day. Oh, well. What’s a mom to do, except keep trying, keep teaching.
One of the things that my girls super-love is when I make cleaning some sort of game. So, I thought I would share with you some of our faves and a few ideas that the gals on Facebook shared:
Clean by Color – This is by far the most requested cleaning game. I assign the girls each a color and they have to go pick up all the things in the room that are their designated color. When they get them all, they run back to me and ask for their next color. Once we make it through all the colors, in theory, the room should be clean. 🙂 Don’t forget about clear, silver, gold, and multi-color!
Rockin’ Zone Cleaning – When we have a big mess to take care of, it’s fun to split up the room into zones. Assign each kid to a zone and start the music (we prefer a little Def Leppard or Poison.) Everyone cleans in their zone and when the song ends, everyone rotates to the next zone.
Race to Reward – Write a bunch of cleaning tasks that need to be done on pieces of paper. Fold up and put in a basket. Start a timer for 30 minutes (or whatever). When you say ‘go,’ everyone grabs a paper and tries to complete the task as fast as they can (and do a good job). As soon as they are done, they grab another paper to do a second task…and, so on. When the timer buzzes, whoever has completed the most tasks wins a reward. Or, you could have a grand prize, 1st, and 2nd prize.
Find the dimes – Hide a certain amount of dimes under the scattered items on the floor. Let junior know how many dimes are hidden in the room and it’s their task to find them. BUT, they can only find the dimes by putting away items. If they pick something up, in an effort to find the dime, they have to put it away.
Animal Act – If you were a bunny, how would you clean?? Hop, hop. If you were a giraffe, I bet you could put away the highest things. If you were a snake, how would you clean? Clean like a cheetah…now, be a turtle! …you get the idea.
Crazy Jobs – Write down the tasks that need to be done on separate pieces of paper and put in a basket. Additionally, write down several crazy tasks to mix into the basket, such as: do 15 jumping jacks, run around the house making horse sounds, sing the ABC’s backwards, eat a treat in the kitchen, etc. The kids will love the anticipation of the crazy job, that they’ll not mind doing the tedious task, so they can pick again.
ABC Cleaning – This can be a hard one and maybe not the best when you need something done quickly, but the kids will still get a kick out of it. Have them try to find and put away an item that starts with each letter of the alphabet. When they’re done, start over!
How about you? Do you ever use games to make cleaning more fun?? Please share!
Did you have a fun Easter? Ours was lovely. We had Dan’s family over for church, dinner, and the egg hunt. Here’s a few pics from our day…
Happy Tuesday!
Thanks so much for these great ideas! I’m going to try some of them with my daughter today. I think she might actually get her room clean with these games 🙂
I like the color search option. We usually do the number game. I have them pick up 10 cars, or 10 action figures or 10 pieces of clothes. And then do it again if needed.
*Finding the Pretty & Delicious Linky Party
Ya, that’s a great one!
The game that my kids love the most is “I Spy” cleanup. It’s somewhat similar to your color one, but we take it a step further and do things like “I spy something that you use in the bathroom” (so if there are dirty towels on the floor, hair barrettes, etc). “Something you write with” (crayons, pencils, markers) “the color ______”, etc. You can make it as broad or as specific as you want depending on what needs to be cleaned up. We make it a race to see who can clean up the most items from each category. My kids like to take turns being the one who spies too. My three year old isn’t as good at spying items (she’ll often just pick something/say something specific that there’s only one of) but then runs and puts it away anyway, so whatever, as long as the house is getting cleaned up it works for me!
Ah!! I love all of these ideas! I especially like hiding dimes. This would be VERY motivating for my daughter!
Oh, good! Glad they’re helpful to you. Thanks for stopping by, Megan!