Formation of household skills through the game.

The activ­i­ty of the child is man­i­fest­ed pri­mar­i­ly in the form of ori­ent­ing activ­i­ty. The child reacts vivid­ly to all objects new to him, espe­cial­ly to mov­ing, sound­ing, bright­ly col­ored ones, turns, reach­es for them, grabs them, drags them into his mouth, throws them on the floor, and on this basis mas­ters the first actions.
Imi­ta­tion plays an impor­tant role in the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous activ­i­ties in a child. Watch­ing the move­ments and actions of adults, chil­dren try to repro­duce them. Repeat­ing their attempts, they grad­u­al­ly mas­ter com­plex actions: they learn to walk, talk, crawl, run, use house­hold items, mas­ter house­hold, hygiene, and gam­ing skills. A large num­ber of skills in preschool age are acquired dur­ing the game. The game does not need to achieve high results of the action, does not require a cer­tain qual­i­ty of its per­for­mance. In the game, the child eas­i­ly puts up with the approx­i­mate sim­i­lar­i­ty of the action with the mod­el that fol­lows.

Con­tent:

1. From 6 to 12 months.
2. From 1 to 2 years.
3. 2 to 3 years old.

From 6 to 12 months.

1. Learn­ing to eat and drink from a mug.

Buy a good spe­cial “soft” spoon for your child (you can use a tea­spoon) and a beau­ti­ful, bright plate for babies. Let him have his own cut­lery and crock­ery. Please note that the dish­es for the baby should not be break­ing and not have sharp edges.
Tod­dlers hold a spoon in their fist — this is nor­mal. Give the child a spoon, let him try to scoop up food on his own. As a rule, the prob­lem aris­es not so much with scoop­ing up food, but with its sub­se­quent trans­porta­tion and fold­ing into the mouth. The child does not yet pos­sess the nec­es­sary skills, so he is not good at it. Gen­tly, hold­ing the child’s hand, help him scoop up food and bring it to his mouth. Be patient, the baby needs time to devel­op the nec­es­sary coor­di­na­tion. A stained table, clothes and a smeared face are an inevitable process, but this gives the baby plea­sure, do not scold him for this, let him fool around.
At first, the child will strive to take food with his hands — this is nat­ur­al, because it’s eas­i­er this way. Move his atten­tion to the spoon. Don’t start feed­ing him right away. While the baby is hun­gry, he will strive to sat­is­fy this feel­ing on his own and along the way will mas­ter the skill of own­ing a spoon. Do not try to quick­ly feed the baby your­self, it is bet­ter to take a sec­ond spoon and feed him with it.
Stim­u­late your baby’s inter­est in using a spoon. Praise, say how big he is already — he eats. Give him a spoon every time he feeds. He eats with your help — great, eats him­self — even bet­ter, “wields” both with a spoon and with his hands — won­der­ful! Feed the baby togeth­er with oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers — after all, babies at this age imi­tate adults with plea­sure.
Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the “hand­ing over” of the spoon, give the child a chil­dren’s mug (for a start, you can take a non-spill bot­tle). Pour a sip of water into it. With a large amount of liq­uid, a child can choke out of habit, because much more liq­uid from a mug enters the mouth than, for exam­ple, when suck­ing from a bot­tle with a nip­ple. Let him drink in small sips and do not tilt the mug too much, then a lit­tle water will get into his mouth.
Every time your child asks for a drink, offer a non-spill mug. To avoid the temp­ta­tion to drink from the paci­fi­er, remove the bot­tles from your eyes.
Pour quite a bit of water into the mug. Help the baby by hold­ing the mug by the bot­tom so that the child does not spill. Explain that if the baby tilts the mug too far, the water will come out. For the first time, almost every­one is poured over, so do not swear and be patient, cheer and praise the baby for his efforts. Thus, with the help of sim­ple manip­u­la­tions and your pos­i­tive atti­tude to the process, the baby will quick­ly learn to eat with a spoon and drink from a mug by him­self.

2. Items can move.

- Give your baby a clear plas­tic bot­tle and show him how to put, for exam­ple, a small toy into it. The neck of the bot­tle should be nar­row so that the child, if he wants to get a toy, could not stick his pen inside. Show him that in order to get the toy, you need to turn the bot­tle over, and the toy will fall out by itself. Let him try to do this exer­cise him­self. If the baby can not cope, then show every­thing again, guide him, be patient. It is worth low­er­ing into the bot­tle those items that the child would like to get.
— Now give the child an opaque con­tain­er (a can of for­mu­la, cof­fee, a bot­tle of vit­a­mins, med­i­cines, a bot­tle of sham­poo, etc.) Look into it and say: “Wow, what I see!” and let the child see it. Let him try to get what is in the bank. Take con­tain­ers of dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes, put in them var­i­ous objects and sub­stances that the child would be inter­est­ed in extract­ing (raisins, sand, peb­bles, but­tons, small toys). Let the child try to low­er the objects into the con­tain­er, then get them out. Help and show until he suc­ceeds. With the help of this exer­cise, the child learns to dis­tin­guish between large and small, nar­row and wide.
— When you bathe the baby, then give him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pour and pour water from some con­tain­er into the bath, and prefer­ably from sev­er­al, dif­fer­ent in size, for exam­ple, the same bot­tle of vit­a­mins or an ordi­nary ladle, mug, etc. So the baby will under­stand that water is placed in any ves­sel, that it is pour­ing.
— Take sev­er­al objects that are the same in shape but dif­fer­ent in mass. For exam­ple: a bal­loon and a ball; a cube made of paper and a wood­en cube; an emp­ty plas­tic bot­tle and a bot­tle filled with (water, sand, small toys, peb­bles). Now lift both objects to the same height and invite the child to guess which object will fall faster. It will be inter­est­ing for the kid to observe the fast and slow move­ment of objects that have the same shape. So the child learns to dis­tin­guish between heavy and light.
— Intro­duce your child to clock­work toys. Show and explain to him how to play with them: “I’m start­ing a bun­ny. Now the bun­ny is jump­ing.” First, the child will fol­low your actions and the move­ments of the toy, and then let him try to start the toy him­self. This exer­cise will help him learn how to open doors, where you need to turn the knobs, turn the key in the lock, etc.

3. One to the oth­er.

- Check if your child under­stands that one object can be placed or placed on top of anoth­er? Give him a mug and ask him to put it on the table, and put a pil­low on the sofa. If he knows how to do this, then give him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand and devel­op this skill. Gath­er sev­er­al dif­fer­ent house­hold items that can be stacked on top of each oth­er. It is best to take those that have flat sur­faces: baby food pack­ages, for­mu­la tins, can and bot­tle caps, milk bags, cubes, pil­lows, etc. Start with big items. Show your child how to put them on top of each oth­er, and under­line the word for: “Here, look, I’m putting a jar on a jar.” Build a tow­er with dif­fer­ent objects with your child. Then let the child build a sim­i­lar tow­er on his own, praise him and give him a lit­tle hint. And let him knock down the tow­er after he builds it. With the help of this exer­cise, you will not only teach your child how to prop­er­ly put and place var­i­ous things and objects, but also give him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a lit­tle fun, play pranks.
— Now, as the base of the tow­er, take a large object, such as a large cube, and then give the child small­er and small­er objects so that he puts them one on top of the oth­er — the struc­ture should turn out to be quite sta­ble. Then you can give the child sev­er­al objects at once, let him decide in what order he will put them. It is pos­si­ble that the baby will not fol­low your exam­ple and will not start with a large object. It’s okay, he will do it lat­er, because now he is just learn­ing to under­stand what size is. Give your child the right to find his own way on how to build a tow­er so that it does not fall.
— More often try to show your child the items that you put one on top of the oth­er: bed linen, news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, things in the clos­et, plates in the side­board. Talk to him about what you are doing and why, and when­ev­er pos­si­ble, allow the child to help you. After all, chil­dren love it so much when they pay atten­tion, ask for help. One con­ve­nient rea­son to do this is when you unload cans of canned food from your bag and put them on the shelves.

From 1 to 2 years.

1. Hygiene.

- While the baby is very small, mom pro­vides him with clean­li­ness and neat­ness. But soon the baby will grow up, and he will have to take care of per­son­al hygiene. How to teach this to a child?
— The most impor­tant rule of hygiene is to wash your face and wash your hands. But we know that it is nec­es­sary to wash your hands after the street, and after the toi­let, and before eat­ing, but what about a child who is cer­tain­ly not impressed by sto­ries about microbes.
To begin with, buy baby soap in the form of var­i­ous ani­mals — you must admit that it will be much more inter­est­ing for a child to wash a duck­ling, a fish or a kit­ten, and at the same time pens. Try not to buy soaps with harsh, sweet scents, as your child may not like this and cause a dis­like for soap and hand­wash­ing. While wash­ing, you can tell your baby a sto­ry about each fin­ger, which is real­ly wait­ing to be washed.
When you teach your baby to wash, then tell and show him how you wash your­self, how fun it is. And after wash­ing, be sure to pre­pare a gen­tle, clean tow­el for your baby, with which he will wipe his face with plea­sure. Tell in the same way, and if pos­si­ble, show (in the pic­ture, on the street) how cats, ducks, and oth­er ani­mals wash. The kid will be inter­est­ed to learn sim­i­lar facts about ani­mals.
— Teeth can also be learned to brush effort­less­ly. Buy a bright­ly col­ored chil­dren’s tooth­brush and invite your child to try brush­ing their own teeth, fol­low­ing your exam­ple. Explain how it is nec­es­sary, com­pose a short fairy tale about microbes that need to be cleaned every morn­ing so that the teeth are healthy and strong.
— Most chil­dren love to bathe, so it is worth sup­port­ing the child’s desire to sit in the bath for a longer time, because in this way he will devel­op a habit that will remain with him for life. Bathing a baby can be turned into a fun activ­i­ty, and not just a dai­ly hygiene rou­tine. Let the child play with foam, also throw in chil­dren’s toys that will give the child the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play and dream up. Even as he gets old­er and gives up toys, the child will be hap­py to bathe, as the habit of going to bed will remain clean.

2. Whose things are these?

- Teach your child to choose one item from sev­er­al, you can choose one of the two at first, but then com­pli­cate the task. Take the fol­low­ing items: the child’s shoe, his wash­cloth, his blan­ket, and his mug. Put in front of the child all these objects and some object from the “strangers”. Ask: “Where is your shoe?” or “Where is your mug?” If the baby looks or points at the item you asked about, then say: “Well done, you’re right — this is your shoe!” And give the shoe to him. Con­tin­ue such activ­i­ties in order to teach your baby to take the object cor­rect­ly with­out your prompt­ing.
— When you lay out the laun­dry after wash­ing, show the child his piles — “Here are the tow­els, here are the sheets …” Turn this into an edu­ca­tion­al game. Pick up one thing and let the kid guess which pile to put it in. Make a few mis­takes on pur­pose so that the child enjoys help­ing you and cor­rect­ing you.
— Ask the baby to go to anoth­er room and bring his things and yours. Tell him: “Go, bring your sweater and my jack­et, we will get dressed and go for a walk.” If it is still hard for the baby to remem­ber that there are so many things to bring, at first ask him to bring him only one thing. It is advis­able to keep all things in the same place and send the child for things only where he can get them with­out the risk of falling or drop­ping some­thing.

3. One by one.

- Give your child a plas­tic buck­et (bowl, box) and put a few small items next to it. Show him how to put all the objects inside and how to get them out of there, adher­ing to the prin­ci­ple — one at a time. Tell him, “Put them all in the buck­et. First one item, then anoth­er, and anoth­er.” So the baby, at the same time, will get acquaint­ed with the words “all” and “oth­er”, although he will not yet under­stand them. Try to turn this activ­i­ty into a game, such as drop­ping objects from dif­fer­ent heights, shak­ing a buck­et or box to show that each object has a dif­fer­ent sound, etc.
— Also, you need to teach the child to low­er long objects into a nar­row neck. For exam­ple, show your child how to drop beads, a spoon, or a pen­cil into the nar­row neck of a plas­tic bot­tle.
— The tasks described above help the child learn to put objects in exact­ly the right place. When your child has learned to do at least some of these tasks, he will be ready to start putting things in spe­cif­ic places. For exam­ple, buy a plain board or a padded board with cut out shapes from a toy store. In front of the child’s eyes, take out a cir­cle or oth­er fig­ure and give it to the baby. See if he puts the fig­urine next to the hole or right into it. Praise the child for any attempts to com­plete the task on his own, and if nec­es­sary, offer him help or show him every­thing again.

From 2 to 3 years.

1. We dress our­selves.

- Start teach­ing the child the skills of self-dress­ing should be from two to three years. From about this age, the child devel­ops a per­sis­tent desire for inde­pen­dence, and if you react in time and cor­rect­ly, then you will not have to force the child to do some­thing on his own at all — he will strive for this him­self.
— If the child does not want to dress him­self, then try to push him a lit­tle, for exam­ple, by dress­ing his socks or panties incom­plete­ly and invit­ing the child to fin­ish dress­ing him­self.
— Very often, the very design of the child’s clothes hin­ders the rapid devel­op­ment of the skill of self-dress­ing. If the baby’s things have numer­ous zip­pers and laces, small but­tons, then this great­ly com­pli­cates the process of dress­ing for him. There­fore, for the first time, it would be more appro­pri­ate for a child to buy things with large, com­fort­able fas­ten­ers, Vel­cro, and rub­ber bands.
— There are spe­cial edu­ca­tion­al games — lac­ing or just any toys that can be unfas­tened and fas­tened. By play­ing these games, the child devel­ops fine motor skills of the hands and it will be eas­i­er for him to cope with his clothes. Girls can learn their first dress­ing skills on dolls with their doll clothes.
— You can play dif­fer­ent games with your child that will help him learn how to dress. For exam­ple, let the trouser legs become tun­nels, and the baby’s legs become trains. Invite your baby to “dri­ve trains into the tun­nels.” Girls, and boys too, are hap­py to play “fash­ion show” or “pho­to shoot” — this is an excel­lent occa­sion for learn­ing how to dress inde­pen­dent­ly.
— To get your baby to inter­act when dress­ing, look kind­ly at him, joke, hum and always pro­nounce the actions per­formed. An exam­ple of a sim­ple game: “We are going for a walk, we will stomp our feet, so we need to put on our feet. We put on the right leg. We put on the left leg. Now let’s stomp our feet”

2. Things behave dif­fer­ent­ly.

- Intro­duce the child to the air, teach him to blow. First, tell him: “I’ll blow on you now!” and gen­tly blow on the baby’s cheek or on his hair. Then say: “Now you blow” and see if the baby will imi­tate you. Then, bring a piece of paper (a feath­er, a rib­bon) to your lips and blow on it, and then ask the baby to do the same.
— Do this exer­cise with dif­fer­ent objects. Blow out the can­dle, blow on the water so that rip­ples appear, blow off pieces of fine­ly chopped paper from the palm of your hand, blow on the ring with a soap film so that you get a bub­ble. Again and again show the baby this action on dif­fer­ent objects, let him feel the move­ment of air, see what is hap­pen­ing and how objects change if air acts on them. Be sure to give your child the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do the same as you.
— Show your child toys that are acti­vat­ed when they are blown on. Intro­duce him and give a whis­tle and a pipe, soap bub­bles in your hands. Tell your child about house­hold items that blow them­selves, for exam­ple: a hair dry­er, a vac­u­um clean­er, a fan, a heater, show him them in action. Let him feel the move­ment of the air and see its effect on var­i­ous objects.