30 Age Appropriate Chores for Your Toddler

Toddler chores are a wonderful opportunity to bring out the natural helper in your little one and to help them become self-sufficient kids. Confused about when to introduce chores, or what chores are age appropriate? To help get your toddler started, we’ve picked our favorite developmentally appropriate ideas for every age and stage.

The Value of Chores for Your Children

As parents, we are all deeply invested in raising our children to be responsible and conscientious grownups. One of the best ways to instill these values in our kiddos is to incorporate daily household chores into their lives—and probably doing it earlier than you’re imagining! Encouraging your toddler to participate in age appropriate chores has enormously positive impacts on their development and overall well being.

Chores Strengthen Fine Motor Skills

Toddlers can enhance their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination by pitching in with chores that involve picking up toys, sorting objects, folding laundry, and stirring ingredients together during mealtime prep. These activities help strengthen their muscles and improve their dexterity.

Chores Boost Cognitive Development

Chores involve problem-solving, sequencing, and decision making, which are all brain boosting activities. Tasks like sorting objects by color or shape, or chores that require logically following a series of steps for success stimulate critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Chores Encourage a Sense of Responsibility

Participating in chores helps toddlers develop a sense of responsibility, and encourages them to recognize that they’re capable of contributing to the household. This helps foster a positive self-image and a feeling of being valued by their family as they get to see how much their effort is appreciated.

Chores Foster Independence and Self Confidence

As toddlers learn to complete tasks independently, they gain confidence in their own abilities. By accomplishing simple chores, like setting the table or throwing away their trash, toddlers learn to rely on themselves and develop a sense of independence.

Chores Deepen Emotional Intelligence

Chores help toddlers realize there are interests outside of their own, and encourage the consideration of the whole family’s well being—their “jobs” contribute to the whole household. They can teach toddlers important life skills like patience, perseverance, and resilience.

Chores Provide Routine and Structure

Engaging in regular, predictable chores can establish a sense of routine and structure for toddlers. They learn to prioritize and manage their time effectively, building their overall organizational skills and improving their focus.

Chores Promote Family Bonding

Chores are an amazing opportunity for toddlers to bond with family members. Involving them in simple tasks creates shared experiences and moments for distraction-free quality time. Plus, your whole house is cleaner, to boot.

Tips for Helping Your Children Learn How to Do Chores

Before diving into assigning chores to your toddler it can help to appropriately calibrate your own expectations—after all, your toddler is learning to navigate new tasks, and it will require a lot of patience. Also, it may make your house messier at first (or for even longer), but the payoff is definitely worth the endurance test. Here are some ideas for teaching your kiddo how to do chores.

Involve Your Child in Tidying Up Early and Often

Monkey see, monkey do—the first step towards involving your toddler in chores is allowing them to watch you tidy up while they’re still little. Children learn and imitate behaviors by watching their caregivers (this is called modeling), so don’t save chores for naptime. Once they’re older and mobile, encourage them to join in with simple tasks, such as putting toys back into a bin.

Patience, Is in Fact, a Virtue

It’s inevitable that any task including a toddler will take longer to accomplish, and may make things messier in the short term. Resist demonstrating frustration—it will really take the wind out of your little one’s sails—or stepping in and taking over the task because it’s quicker and easier.

Have Designated Clean Up Time

Children thrive in routines and predictability, and building clean up time into existing daily routines is a great way to set their expectations. Try incorporating it into your bedtime routine: after bathtime, spend a few minutes picking up mess in the bedroom before snuggling into storytime and going to bed. Consistently expecting them to follow through on chores will prevent your kiddo from putting them off in the hopes that mom or dad will take care of it.

Don’t Aim for Perfection

Intellectually, we are well aware that no one is perfect, and that toddlers are still learning to be humans—but it’s easy to get frustrated when a chore isn’t being done “right”. A relaxed approach can help you avoid turning chores into a power struggle and keep cleaning up light and fun.

Make Your Instructions Specific

Show, explain, and demonstrate how to do the chore first. Be very specific and intentional with the language of your instructions—”please clean up the playroom” is vague and won’t be understood by your toddler. Instead, be explicit—”please put your books on the shelf and the toys in the bin” is a far more effective directive for little listeners.

Turn Cleaning Up into a Game

Crank The Clean Up Song and turn chores into a game for maximum toddler participation. Let your kiddo throw stuffed animals into a bin for points, or make it a race to see who can fill up their toy bin the fastest.

Be Effusive in Your Praise

Compliment how hard your child is working while they’re doing their chores, and don’t wait until the job is done to offer praise. Avoid micromanaging them, chill on the reminders when possible, and enjoy watching their little brains solve a problem and work it out for themselves.

Age Appropriate Chores

Here’s a list of our favorite age appropriate chores for your toddler that are straightforward and guaranteed to be (almost) frustration-free.

Chores for 2 Year Olds

Toddlers this age are naturally interested in helping out their parents around the house, and have the mobility and attention spans necessary to manage simple one or two step jobs. Choose a few tasks a day, but try to keep it light and fun!

Putting toys and books back where they belong
Setting the table with the help of parents or siblings
Putting dirty clothes and towels in the hamper
Wiping down tables and countertops
Taking dirty dishes to the sink
Wiping up small spills
Feeding pets
Dusting
Picking out clothes for the next day
Throwing away garbage

Chores for 3 Year Olds

Your 3 year old is ready for more challenging chores that require focus and strengthened fine motor skills. And you’ve probably noticed an increased interest in being independent, which means they’ll be less interested in your assistance (now that’s a parenting win).

Dressing themselves (make sure it’s something that is easily put on—nothing complicated)
Watering houseplants
Helping with meal prep by fetching ingredients, stirring, mixing, or adding pre-measured ingredients to bowls
Sweeping the floor
Loading the washing machine or dryer
Picking up sticks in the yard
Putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher
Setting up bathtime (getting out towels, toys, and fresh clothes)
Folding washcloths and pillowcases
Choosing their own snacks

Chores for Your 4 Year Old

Preschoolers are highly reward motivated, so this is an ideal time to create a chore chart (who knew a sticker could be life changing?). They’re also old enough to experience a real sense of accomplishment for a job well done, so don’t be surprised if they request even more chores to help out with.

Making their bed
Sorting laundry into towels, bedding, lights, and darks
Matching their socks
Cleaning out the bathroom sink after they brush their teeth
Unloading utensils from the dishwasher
Pouring their own cereal
Bringing in the mail
Scrubbing veggies and fruits
Putting away clean laundry
Measuring ingredients during meal prep

When assigning chores to your toddler, it’s important to choose age-appropriate tasks that align with their developmental abilities and ensure their safety (that’s why your supervision is crucial). Chores can actually be fun and enjoyable family-centered activities rather than, well, chores. Just provide guidance and plenty of encouragement throughout the process and your little one will be a natural helper in no time.