Veronika’s at that beautiful age where she actually enjoys cleaning up; toddlers are easily roped into the task with a familiar song or rhyme. But if that’s not enough, here’s a fun way to add a little fine motor work into the process, too.

After some fun this afternoon building towers with blocks, it was time for clean-up. I decided to give her a novel way to get all those blocks back into their bin.

Instead of simply asking her to toss them in, I handed her a pair of tongs and showed her how to pinch a block in between the tongs, carry it over to the bin, and then release it.

There was almost endless joy to the repetition of this: pinch with the tongs, carry over, release, repeat!

This was such a simple and fun way to clean up the blocks, and arguably occupied her longer than building the towers had. She loved the challenge of it, and I saw her testing out the method several times throughout the afternoon.

What’s your family’s favorite clean-up game? Please share in the comments!