5 Things

When we get to the point of not being able to get the girls to pick things in house, I sometimes have them go pick up 5 things and show them to me.  I don't make any big/small/significance assignments, I just have them bring me 5 things, then have them put them away.  Tara had a treat box that the girls can pick out of from time to time.  The treat box has things like comic books, little kid books, stickers, workbooks, stickers, pencils, sometimes candy, just little stuff for them to pick.  I usually tie performance with "5 things" to getting to pick out of the box.  This seems to be a fairly motivating thing for at least Kate and Mary, who try to outdo each other.  (Sometimes just the person in the lead at the end gets to pick out, sometimes those who do a good job get to pick out.  This keeps them on their toes, although it also gets Mary to try to keep bargaining to not be in the lead, but still pick out.)  It seems to work better than just telling them to clean up, since they can easily find and grab 5 things at a time that need to be picked up.  The fact that I made a competition out of it takes care of the rest.  Once they get all the big stuff, they start to say that everything is done, and I have to make suggestions at that point, but they eventually start tuning their focus and finding lots of stuff to pick up.

Today we "played" 5 things, you can see the results.  This might seem insignificant, until you consider these are sets of 5, and it was stuff the girls picked up and put away, in a house that wasn't that messy...