Learning through Chores

Written by Rachel Miller

Mom Stages - Children

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I have three kids all under four and they love being useful, feeling needed, and knowing that they contribute to our family. I love to look for the sneaky ways to help my kids learn without realizing it, or without the confines of a structured environment. Chores are a great way for my kids to contribute, for learning to occur and for us to get more done in a day. The inspiration for this post, comes from an earlier Type-A article: Age Appropriate Children's Chores.  Thanks Lisa for getting me thinking!

Sorting laundry and math skills:

• Counting, learning one-to-one correspondence, or learning that "1" means 1 item. Kids Love to Know explains number correspondence as, "how to point to only one object when they are counting and to stop counting when all objects have been touched." Laundry piles are a great way to physically experience numbers and quantity while contributing to the family!
• Recognizing and creating sets. We are working on folding our clothes together in bundles (see tip post). My kids are learning which colors and clothes "clash" and create sets of top, bottom and accessories, with their clothes.
• Differentiation and similarities comparisons. Example: Daddy has a shirt, Z has a shirt. Daddy's shirt is bigger but both are shirts and both are folded the same way. Or, we may have a contest and my daughter's pile is bigger than my son's (or smaller than). Recognizing quantities is a pre-math requirement.
• Matching socks. We can play the make-a-match card game... or we can play make-a-match with socks! I prefer the second. I detest socks and love the fact that my kids match them together. Now we are working on their motor skills. Hopefully, they will begin folding them soon!

Emptying the dishwasher with your preschooler:

• Discussions of bigger and smaller - Which plate is bigger? Can you find the smallest spoon? Which stack of cups is the tallest?
• Practice sorting items that have similarities into groups. Discuss exceptions. Example: We keep all of our forks in one location, except for our large serving forks.
• Explore Space, Child Care Aware, advises kids to "see and explore how shapes and things fit together". For us, this means stacking plates and bowls in the most compact way so they can "fit" into the cupboards and spooning our spoons so they fit into the silverware tray.
• Dish washing is a great way to incorporate math vocabulary into your day: Are the cups on the top or the bottom? What dish is the lightest? The heaviest? Is this dish wetter or drier than "that" one? Can you find the dish that can hold the most? How many circles can you find? Squares? Cubes? Cylinders? Rectangles?
• Practice basic counting and arithmetic. How many plates are in the dishwasher? Put some away and re-count. What happened to the amount of dishes in the dishwasher when we put some away? I was amazed that my three year old has begun to understand the concept of subtraction from playing with dishes.
• Responsibility and safety. This is probably one of the most important lessons kids can learn while doing the dishes. We talk about how knives are dangerous and how to call mom (me) when we break a dish so I can supervise the clean up. We also discuss how when we make a mess (spill water from a dish that got flipped, or spill the silverware during "putting it away") we need to clean it up.

Cooking with your toddlers:

• Sequencing steps. It is important for kids to follow specific steps in a process. Example: First, mix eggs, butter and sugar. Then add the flour. Finally, spoon the cookies onto the cookie sheet. This is a great time to discuss consequences and make predictions. If we skip the flour step, can we still make cookies?
• Exposure to fractions. My preschoolers have learned that fractions are a part of a greater whole by measuring the full amount and then subtracting parts to put in the recipe. Example: While making bread we use six cups of flour, but we add them one at a time to the dough. It takes an extra step to demonstrate fractions as I found that they "get it" more if we start from the whole and work backwards. This typically means I have to measure twice, but the experience is worth it!
• Learn and practice sensory vocabulary with terms used to describe textures, tastes and physical motions. Examples: Is it soft? hard? wet? clumpy? slimy? etc. Does this taste salty? sweet? bitter? sour? etc. Can you stir, pour, knead, mash, break, etc.
• Encourage the kids to try new foods. Kids Health made the observation that kids are more likely to try a new food if they have ownership of it, if they feel investeed in it as the "chef" or the person who made the meal. Having your children cook with you provides opportunities to discuss wise food choices.
• Discuss the importance of refrigeration and sanitation while cooking.

Mopping, wiping, vacuuming and learning:

• I use mopping to work on memory skills. Did you already mop here? How can you tell? With our table top we can easily practice deductive reasoning. The area without crumbs and greasy handprints was wiped down, the other areas still need attention.
• With mopping, short-term memory is more important. Often the floor looks about the same. So we work on developing our short-term memory: where have we mopped? Where do we need to mop next? My kids currently are obsessed with Dora, so we try to make mopping into an adventure. "Go under the table, around the chairs, towards the sink".
• We also discuss patterns and progression by starting on one side of the room and working towards the other so we can know where we mopped.

Do you incorporate chores into learning in your home?  We'd love to hear about it!

Rachel loves to learn with her three kiddos.  She is a regular contributor at Quirky Momma.

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