Clean Up Time!

Time to clean up! These words can sound a bit dreadful at first, but in fact, they don’t have to be! Children especially love routines, and clean up time is a perfect way to instill a new routine and give them the opportunity to be responsible too! And it all begins with organization.

Start gathering containers such as boxes, bins, jars, empty food containers, or baskets. You can try recycling some materials, or else buy matching boxes if you have the budget. As for your kids, you can delegate the storage of their toys to them as a great starting point. When selecting boxes for your kids’ items, make sure these allow for easy retrieval and do not have sharp, pointed corners or parts. Boxes make a great storage option for toys that are used frequently; you can even go the extra mile and have your kids paint these boxes at their whim. Next up is to attach labels to your containers. For children’s items, attaching photos (cutouts from magazines will do) will add more fun to the labels. Make sure you write the correct labels legibly for your child to read.

Once your organizational materials are ready, it’s time to start sorting! Sort the items for storage according to kind and frequency of use. Along with your children, sort the toys into their new homes. By doing this together, your kids will feel more responsible for their toys. Don’t forget to let them help make decisions on what will go where, because they would surely be delighted to have a say too! I remember my then three-year-old son deciding that all his wheeled toys had to go to the red basket, so we started putting those wheeled items into their new home. Soon, however, the basket was overflowing with the items so my son quickly decided that we should use instead the big brown basket for them, because it was “way bigger than the red basket.” That had been a perfect example of authentic, meaningful learning at his own pace and time. 

When it is time to clean up, find a way to involve your kids in the process, all the while making it fun for them. The use of a timer is a great idea. I always posed a challenge to my children during clean up time, asking them how many minutes they would take to put away their building blocks. They would then make a prediction and we would set the timer. Once the timer was set, we would quickly work together to put all the blocks away before the time ran out! It was such a fun race and it enhanced cooperation and early numeracy skills in my kids, and surely yours will find as much fun in it too! Don’t forget to praise them for doing a great job, as this positive reinforcement encourages them to do better the next time!