One of my dreaded chores growing up was folding the laundry. I don’t know why, but in a family of 6 people, this was not a fun task. To this day, I have to say I hate doing laundry. I’m lazy and wait and do it all in one day. My husband seems to think that it would be better if I would do a little every day, but that sounds even more dreadful to me.
I didn’t really learn much about laundry until I lived on my own. I’m sure my Mom tried to teach me, but I didn’t worry about it too much. Now that I have a family of my own, and two little kids who seem to always get that white shirt stained, I find my self really valuing laundry skills. So, this week, I’m going to have an activity with my Activity Days group and help them learn how to do some laundry. Let’s see if they find it as dreadful as I do!
The first thing we are going to do, is play a couple of games. I’m planning on dividing them up into two teams, and giving them each a HUGE pile of laundry (clean of course….I think they wouldn’t like to sort through my dirty clothes that much). Everything will be inside out, and we will have a sorting race. They will have to turn things right side out, look for a stain, and then sort them into appropriate baskets according to what they think can be washed together. I will even hide a few things in pockets to see if they find them and remove them before sorting. For the stains, I’m going to put a little colored circle somewhere on the clothing that they have to find, remove, and then put on themselves. It should be a fun little race!
The next game we will play will be to take the same laundry, and have a folding and sorting race as if it is already clean, and needs to be sorted into stacks according to who they belong to. I’ll have a prize for the team that finishes first.
Afterward, we are going to go over some Laundry 101 tips. Here are a few that I found that I’m going to share with the girls:
1. When do you wash in cold water vs. hot?
2. Stains…are they all the same? I found this great little bit of information at ehow.com that tells you about the different types of stains. We are going to go over a few and what you should do for them.
3. I found this list of super duper basics in Laundry care that I’m going to go over with the girls. This way, maybe they can start helping their Moms with the laundry soon if they are not doing so already!
The great thing about this calling is that the girls are so eager to learn at this age. But, we have to make it fun too! For more examples of our Activity Days that we’ve had, check out these links below:
Activity Days-Article of Faith Games
Activity Days-Health and Nutrition Activity
Activity Days-Thanksgiving Activity