Pre-Reader Chores: A Right of Passage

Chores are an ever present element in our house.  We have rooms and books.  Clothing, dishes, beds, furniture, toys - everything needs a tender here.

My children start working alongside us as soon as they can take a toy out of the chewing-toys basket.  (Teethers, rattles and those cool linking rings.)  Anything they picked out would be put back in by their hands under normal circumstances. No, I did not make them do that when we were over tired or sick.  There were exceptions to the rule to be certain.  Crawlers with enough hand skills join in our laundry folding work.  They can drag anything they can grasp from the tipped laundry basket over to someone else for folding.

When it was just little children in the house with me, this is what we did.  I won't tell you how rewarding it was - because it wasn't.  Laundry takes f.o.r.e.v.e.r. when it is done at the pace of a tot's crawl.  I could have done it much, much faster by myself at that time.

But now, twelve years later, laundry is not my job.  My children do the laundry.

(Actually, there aren't many jobs that are mine exclusively anymore.  The household responsibilities are shared. But there will be lots of posts about how that came about in specific portions.  This is just a post about how it gets started with pre-readers.)

There is a time when a child can help and may WANT to help but can't remember two tasks in a row.  Brains only develop so fast but skills can be trained along the way as they develop.    

Just imagine all the brain development going on when you can engage them at this stage!

OK.  That wasn't my thought at the time - or now really, either.  I'm sure it's there but I'm about the practical application here.

Pre-readers need aids.  But they don't have to be complicated.  Here are the photos that were M's first chore list.

She's three in this picture.   She's made her bed.  To complete this job, the comforter has to be covering the whole mattress, the pillow is up on top, and the special blanket is out of the way at the foot of the bed.  Yes, it's a wad.  Does the bed look tidy when I look in the room?  Absolutely.  And that's a great start on learning chores.

Next she is to tidy her clothing drawers.  She's never been very good at this one.  M is not a details gal to this very day.  But she knew to get all the things into the drawers so they could shut nicely.

Toy areas that she could reach and physically manage were hers to tend.  She organized the board books and infant toys in the top picture.  In the bottom picture she would straighten bins of toys and replace the puzzles on the puzzle shelf. 

Last job on the list is to tidy her place at the table after meals.  Dishes in the dishwasher and "big things" off of her spot.  (Rice you can pick up.  Don't fuss about the bread crumbs, Sweety.)

I printed these photos on pink paper in black & white ink and then laminated them with clear packing tape.  They were hung on the fridge with a magnet/clothes-pin style clip.  She grabbed her chore list every morning and could tend to her jobs w/o my direct supervision.

As she got older and could manage more tasks, she got a second photo list on different color paper.  Pink list was morning chores and green list was the afternoon chores.

She was proud of her work!  She showed her chore lists to everyone.  As a big girl with a chore lists, she was able to see how she had grown.  "I can help!" became more than just a plea to be bigger.  It was true.

Did she need reminding to do her chores? Yes.  She's only three and even I need to be reminded to do things sometimes.

Did she try to do a half-way job sometimes? Uh, yes!  She comes by that trait honestly.  I do things half-way sometimes when I think no one is going to notice.  The cure for that?  Go notice!  If I don't go check, there goes one motivation to do well.  There isn't much for bragging rights if no one notices you did a good job and no need to work at it if no one cares enough to check on it.

How did you come up with your list for her? I walked around the house and examined things.  It takes some brain work and, when you are sleep deprived or hassled, that's hard to manage.  But it was worth the investment.  If you can only think of two things, get those two things on their list!  More ideas will come to you both as you go along.