Children who love to clean! (yes, really!)

In my blog post yesterday I mentioned how our play yard was currently under construction and was in pretty rough shape. Well today we found out that it was going to be at least a week until the new permanent fence was put in. Unfortunately in the meantime the playground is still a mess. A temporary, plastic orange fence, a messy pile of dirt and roots and sticks scattered everywhere....lots and lots of sticks.

Now I'm proud to say that I think a lot of schools would have continued to avoid the yard until everything was 100% back together, but we figured our children were smart enough to handle the mess. Before going outside I made an announcement at lunch that we were going to play in our normal play-yard, but that the fence was not to be touched, and the pile of dirt was not for playing. Simple, to the point and I am proud to say that I only needed to remind one child to stay out of the tempting pile of dirt.

We adults were a little bit more worried about the sticks though. We generally have a rule that the children do not play with sticks that are longer than 5 or 6 inches so there is minimal chance of their accidentally (or occasionally on purpose) hitting someone else. Usually the play yard is pretty well swept clean of these off limits sticks, but after some serious tree trimming yesterday they were scattered all over. I started gathering some of the large ones, intending to get them out of the yard before they were discovered and turned into toys. But with my first armful I found that I had several helpers with their own arms full of sticks. Expectantly they looked at me. "I'm going to put these in the truck* so no one pokes themselves." (*this is an empty plastic sandbox shaped like a dump truck in our yard). There was a chorus of children exclaiming that they were going to do that to. I kept hearing little voices talking about how they didn't want anyone to get poked and screeching a bit in excitement as they found another stick. And with all those eager to help (I didn't ask or make anyone pick up sticks) in about five minutes we had basically all the sticks cleaned up.

And they kept going. Several of the children kept searching for sticks even when all they kept coming back with were little twigs that almost got lost in their hands they were so small. I thanked them as profusely for these little slivers as I did over the larger branches. After all, who doesn't appreciate some extra help while cleaning, especially with the added bonus of enthusiasm while doing it!

This isn't unusual to get such eager help from the children at school. I think one of the main reasons it happens is because we rarely demand that they help clean up. The children are responsible for a mess that they personally make, but a lot of accidental or bigger messes usually draws a crowd eager to help. Often if I find something messy in the classroom (like something one the floor) and don't know who is responsible I will just ask the nearest child to help me clean it up. The key word here is ask. Usually they help out without even thinking twice, or if they hesitate I mention how we want our room to be clean so we can find the materials and work with them and that usually convinces them. If they really don't want to help I do it myself, repeating aloud the mantra about keeping our classroom clean.

One of the best thing about working with young children is how eager they are to help out. At the end of the day in our classroom we have a small basket with slips in it that have different jobs written on them. Today I had made some new job slips into the basket and the children were extremely excited to to not only see what new jobs there were, but to find out if their favorite old job was still an option! Spray and wipe tables is always a favorite, as is using our new carpet sweeper.

The best part is that it is usually the youngest children who are eager to place the classroom back in order. We have a set of twin boys who are not yet 3 and they are always the most eager to start picking jobs. Since they can't read yet they have to bring the slip to a teacher and it always makes me smile to see how quickly they hurry to choose a slip and then the eagerness with which they seek out an adult to reveal its secrets. Then they set off with a determined look on their face to take care of their important job. And that is even more important than that the job actually gets done.