Cleaning up...

My kids (like many kids) are expert mess-makers. My daughter loves to put things back in their places, and if she was on her own, she'd probably never make much of a mess. Of course big brother is the boss though, so he invites her to make a mess with him nearly every morning in the playroom. I've spent many days thinking about the best way to make them clean. I always had a clean-up song in the back of my mind. I didn't want to be the one to sing it though, b/c then I'd have to be there the whole time they are cleaning up. I'd rather be in the kitchen doing my own clean-up while they are cleaning the playroom. 

A few weeks ago, I took the iPod and searched for a clean-up song in Russian but did not have any luck finding one (I speak Russian to the kids, so I try to make everything we do in Russian if I can...there's so many times ahead that I'll be speaking English to them, like if I home school, so I like to keep Russian as the main language for now). I decided that in this case, it'd be ok to make an exception, and I YouTubed a clean-up song. The first one that came up was this one, and it was perfect!!! 5 minutes and 18 seconds long, just the perfect amount of time for little kids to spend cleaning. I play it at least once a day and make them clean up until the song stops (usually they manage to finish in that time). Sometimes I help them, other times I do my own house work or cleaning during that time. Lately they have even asked me to press 'repeat' when the song was over, because they were still not finished cleaning! At their cousins' house the other day, the song was a huge hit and I had the kids "race the song" and they were able to finish cleaning all together in just 4 minutes!