Little’uns

Warning:  Some words in this post may not be spelled correctly.  Considering the fact that they may also not be real words, the spelling is probably a non-issue. 

Although I am a native Californian, all of my mother’s family is originally from Texas.  I grew up with Texas sayings and idioms and for a long time I thought that everyone knew the meaning behind the words my family used.  Didn’t everyone describe a delicious meal as “lairpin’ good”?  Were there other teenagers ready to dive under the couch when a date showed up and their aunts were going to “check behind that boy’s ears”?   Aren’t all young children called youngins’ or little’uns?  For clarification, in our family a little’un was the opposite of bigg’un and usually meant a child who was under Kindergarten age, a.k.a., preschoolers. 

Okay, now that we have all the terminology straight, we can continue with the true focus of this post which is that your preschoolers can be a powerful asset in your family team.  I know that children of this age can be challenging at times but they also are very willing workers and want to be involved with YOU!  With a little guidance, you can start them on a path of being a team player and a responsible bigg’un.

Here are some of the things my kids did when they were preschoolers: 

Put away their laundry.  I put all of their clothes in crates which they carried into their rooms.  To ensure that the clothes landed in the right drawer, I drew little pictures of their clothes and taped the picture to the outside of the drawers.  (Note:  the dresser had several lower drawers that could be easily accessed.  For wood drawers, I taped the picture inside the drawer.)   I created a little sock for the sock drawer, a little pair of “tighty whiteys” for the underwear drawer and a little shirt for the t-shirt drawer, etc.  

Make the bed.  I made sure the kids had comforters so that making the bed really meant to pull up the comforter.

Set the table.  I made a little template out of construction paper that had table place setting.  It had a napkin and the utensils in the proper location.  I put their name on the top and had it laminated.  The template was stored with our placemats so the kids could grab the mats, put the template on the mat and set the table.

Match socks.  I just hate this part of the laundry but the kids thought it was cool.  I would have them pull out all of the socks from the pile and work on matching them up.   Sometimes I would even hide little toys or magnetic alphabet letters in the pile or in a sock as a scavenger hunt.  It kept them pretty busy!

Over the next few weeks I will highlight more kidlet helping ideas. In the meantime, use the above suggestions to spark ideas for your home and family tasks. 

xoxo Paula

What tasks do you have your little’uns doing?  Have you created a simple system to help them?