Sorting Laundry: Turning a Mundane Chore into a Language Experience

 

It’s been a month since I’ve launched my blog and I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been reading!  I am totally enjoying blogging, especially on a topic that I am so passionate about.  Since I started taking my son, Anthony, to Mommy & Me classes, I thought it would be awesome to work with moms and their children- not just the children like I was accustomed to.  Writing this blog has allowed me to do that in a modern way (still hoping that teaching some “live” classes are in my future).  I hoped to reach and inspire moms to encourage language development in a fun and meaningful way – and through your comments, I feel like it is happening.  What has actually been most exciting for me is reaching a little someone who lives far away from me but is close to my heart – my niece!  She lives way out west in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  My sister-in-law has been reading the blog and doing the activities with her!  My heart just melts when I see the pictures of her doing these activities – smiling with her marshmallow snowman – I can’t!!!!  It makes me feel like I can be a larger part of her life from so far away!  Thinking of skype-ing some activities with her and my boys sometime… what do you think, Kristen?  ;)

It seems that everyone here in New York has been spending a little more time in the house than usual this winter.  The snow has left us stuck indoors desperate for things to do.  But, day to day life doesn’t always leave time for “special” activities – many times it involves some planning ahead and moms just don’t always have time for that.  For this reason, I want to start giving some ideas of how to encourage your little one’s language development through everyday routines and activities. First up, laundry…

 

With three boys three and under (and a Hubby who changes his clothes three times a day), there is always a ton of laundry to do at my house.  I can’t believe how quickly the hampers fill up.  It never ends!  To make myself feel like I’m not always doing laundry, I try to only do laundry two days a week (and usually 1-2 loads on another random day).  This requires me to do laundry all day long – I literally set the kitchen timer for each load so that I don’t miss any time.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to rewash a load because it had been sitting in the washing machine wet for so long.  As the clothes come out of the dryer, I just throw them in the laundry basket and by late afternoon, I am left with about 5-7 loads of laundry overflowing in the laundry basket.  I don’t mind washing it but folding and putting it away is a whole other struggle.  I usually start to fold while the boys play, but they slowly make their way over and jump in the piles, run over my already folded laundry, and throw the clothes from the basket all over the floor.  I usually retreat and end up folding after they go to sleep, which I hate.  So, why not turn this mundane chore into a language experience for your little ones and keep them busy while you get the job done!

This is a sorting activity, and if you remember from my previous post, putting items into categories is an important part of how we access and store information, which is an important part of language.  This can be done many different ways – I chose to sort the laundry by WHO IT BELONGS TO, this lends itself to work on POSSESSIVES (Whose shirt?  Mommy’s shirt).  You can also sort it by item (shirts, pants, pajamas, etc.) or even color.  I did it this way because that’s how I sort my laundry after I fold it so it’s easier to put away.  It’s great for Michael to work on POSSESSION as well.  I printed pictures of each member of our family and put a label with the corresponding name (working on Anthony RECOGNIZING all of our names in PRINT) on it.  I then placed each picture on a bin (I always have a lot of these for storage but you can use any kind of container) and lined them up.  I dragged in my laundry basket and told the boys their “job.”  I’m lucky that they always like to help.  I told them to take out one clothing item at a time and put it in the box of the person it belongs to – they thought it was hysterical (I think they were shocked that I was asking them to touch the laundry, I always yell at them to stay away from).  I thought they would have trouble figuring out what belongs to who, but they were actually right on target most of the time!  I would periodically ask, “Michael, whose shirt is that???”  Michael: “Mama.”  Me: “Oh, that’s mama’s shirt!  You’re right!  Mamma’s shirt!”  Always RESTATE your TARGET phrase.  I’m not correcting him but MODELING the correct language.  As they sorted, I folded, just pushing their pile to the front of the box.  When they got to the towels, Anthony asked, “where do the towels go?”  I hesitated (I hadn’t thought of that), and he answered his own question, “we’ll put them in Mommy and Daddy’s boxes because they use these towels.” I was really proud of his ability to PROBLEM SOLVE!

Now that I have the picture already printed, I can just pull it all out the next time it is laundry day (only two days away – waaahh!!!!).  I’m sure the boys will get bored of it after a while, but I was glad to get all of my folding done and find a way to encourage their language development at the same time!  Super productive!  Hope this activity works for you and your little ones!  What day to day routines and activities would you like to turn into a language experience????  Comment below!  I would love your feedback!

Love & Language,

Marisa