Teaching How to Clean Up

Okay guys. This situation takes me back to my days of Group Work with my students. I never wanted to do Group Work because my students would argue and accomplish nothing. I would complain "they just can't work together!" and then, I realized it was my job to actually teach them how to do it. Kids cleaning up falls in the same category. I haven't actually taught him how to clean up.

Every time I ask Bo to clean up, all he sees is a huge mess and no starting point. He gets frustrated before he even starts. So today, when I asked Bo to clean up. I sat with him and told him what I would do. I actually taught him how to clean up. It was his first time, so it wasn't perfect but we're definitely moving in the right direction.

Today, we were working on the room that he rests in. I honestly don't care what he does in here as long as he plays quietly for one hour. So because of that, he pulls everything out and makes a hu
ge mess as he entertains himself. He has game pieces, pom-poms, playing cards, cars, literally it's a nightmare but he loves it as he plays.

One Thing at a Time
I helped direct him as he cleaned. I would tell him to find all of the Candy Land cards, then the pom-poms, and we continued until the floor was cleaned up. By focusing his cleaning process, he was able to see that it wasn't that much. I might even create a list of the categories to clean up next time. I remember my aunt teaching me how to clean my room. She told me start with the biggest piece of furniture first, it's more bang for your buck and it makes everything look more manageable.

Modeling
I didn't help clean up that much, but enough so I could say some phrases that I hope might stick in his brain.

Here's what I said today- (I'll keep adding as I go)
-"Oh, I see a piece of trash. That's easy! I know it goes in the garbage"
-"When I picked up the blanket, the room looks so much cleaner!"
-"Tomorrow, if you put away Candy Land once you're done, you wouldn't have so much to clean at the end"

Encouragement
Remember the Sleep Shuffle Method? I didn't do it, but I remember reading about it. It was something about moving your chair a couple of inches further away each night so that you were out of the room (I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that). That's kind of what we need to start doing. I realized that I used to help Bo clean up and then like last week I told him to clean up all this mess on his own. We need to gradually release (there's a teacher term for you) into being able to clean up. I see this happening in two ways for Bo.

1. My proximity: Bo loves a cheerleader. He once told me that I didn't say "Go, Bo, Go" enough at Soccer class. So I'm kind of going to do the Cleaning Shuffle here. Start inside the room, shuffle a little closer to the door each day until one day I am out the door completely.

2. My help: I sat with Bo as he picked up things and would pick up 2-3 items for each item we were picking up.  As time went on, I didn't pick up any toys.  Tomorrow, I'll probably pick up 2 things and decrease from there. I'll keep going with the process until I'm not picking up anything at all.


A couple of other thoughts: 
-I took out boxes that he has been using to play with. He's not actually playing with them at rest time and they take up a lot of space so the room looks messier than it actually is.
- He had access to a lot of activities that had a lot of pieces. I took out the materials that he doesn't really need.
-I labeled containers a little better. Simply a sharpie and a plastic bag. This way, he knows where to put things.
-Maybe breaking it down a little more. Pick up 1 toy, Now 2 toys, (I don't know. I feel like each day I have a different kid to figure out what's going to work)


Here's to hoping that some combination of these things help. Because I can't pick up one more toy that I didn't play with by myself.

What do you do to encourage kids to clean up?