Do you have a hard time asking your children to clean up the toys after they playing with it? Do the children always make a mess with their personal items? It is challenging for many of the parents to build up younger children’s responsibility to their toys, books, school supplies and other personal belongs. Our preschool teacher provided some suggestions and tips for the parents regarding such situation:

1. Clean up in fun ways!

For example, when cleaning up, parents can tell the children: “how about we clean up your toys a little bit differently today…let’s put stuff with the same colors (or shapes) together!” Another way is making clean-up a game, like a race, for instance. Parents can tell the young children: “let’s have a race and see who can clean up faster!” You can even created a “clean-up song” that can sing with the kids when they cleaning up their toys in school. Motivate children to clean up through some creative and fun activities can also increase interaction between the family members.

2. Communicate with your children

Talk with the kids. Instead of overly pushing them or forcing them to clean up, discussing about “responsibility” and “empathy” with them is relatively important for young children to develop good daily routine. Parents may share some stories, news, and experience with the kids, guiding them to understand the benefits of doing so and then slowly turn it into a everyday practice. Here is a video of the EQ story that focus on cleaning up and valuing our personal stuff:

3. Let kids help with house work

Assigning some simple housework, such as folding clothes, wiping table, washing fruits, watering plants, to your children can provide great opportunities for them to learn about helping others, being more independent and being responsible to the environment they live at. Doing those works is also beneficial for the development of fine motor skills (which involves smaller muscle group movements) in early childhood education.