Chores for Preschoolers

Recently my 3.5 year old has started asking if she can help vacuum when she sees me doing it.  At first I was surprised especially since my son who is now 8 rarely expressed (or expresses!) an interest in any of the house chores.  So, my daughter has been helping with the vacuuming, feeding our fish and setting the dinner table.  I am very proud of her desire to want to help and I am super proud to share that all of these chores she asked to help with.  To help keep her enthusiasm I wanted to make up a chore chart or something to help her feel more accomplished.  For me, I know that physically checking things off on my to-do list make me feel better.  Two things we have alot of at our house are toilet paper rolls and craft sticks so my mind tends to think of how I can use these things.  I knew that whatever I was going to use had to be simple enough for a 3.5 year old to use and understand but at the same time something interesting enough that would encourage and keep her attention. Here is what I came up with:

Supplies used:
Glue
2 toilet paper rolls
1 magnet sheet
letter stickers
star stickers
I didn't take pics of the other supplies but I also used: colored craft sticks, construction paper and glitter.

I decided on black construction paper since the letter stickers I had were a sparkly silver and I thought the black background would show off the letters nicely.  I also used some white glitter although in hindsight I'm not sure I would do it again.  My idea was to have them look sparkly and glittery for my daughter.  Similar to the concept I used with my Learning Seasons craft sticks I printed pictures from the internet that pertained to the chores she would be doing and glued them to the tips of the craft sticks.  I chose a vacuum obviously for vacuuming, utensils for setting the dinner table and a fish for feeding our fish.  

After this part was done I cut a strip of magnet and hot glued it to the backs of the toilet paper rolls and hung them on our refrigerator.  Since the rolls would be hanging from our refrigerator I needed something to put on the bottoms of the rolls to prevent the craft sticks from just falling out.  I cut out circles from the black construction paper and glued to the bottoms of the rolls. 

Now here is how the system works - The roll that says my daughters name is where the craft stick chores stay until she completes a chore which by the way each of these chores are done every day.  Once she completes a chore she takes the craft stick and moves it to the "Good Job" roll.  The next morning she takes the craft sticks from the Good Job roll and places them back into the Tiffany roll.  We have used these chore rolls for about a week now and it works great!  It only took seconds to explain how the system would work before she was off and running!  Every day for the past week she does exactly what is suppose to happen AND without me telling her to do it.  Because we have these on our refrigerator she easily sees them each morning which reminds her of her chores for the day.  It's funny but she asked to set the dinner table when it was still morning.  We'll have to work on that! My point is that she's excited to do her chores and that was my intention!

Tiffany using her chore rolls..........

What do you use to help your children with house chores?