Our favorites:
1. Putting dirty clothes into the hamper. Please excuse me if this list seems to be mostly "put this thing in something else." It is his favorite activity.
2. Putting clothes into the dryer. Our dryer is a front loader with the door that opens down like an oven door, so if I put the wet clothes from the washer on the door, he can push them into the dryer. Mostly.
3. Picking up toys and putting them in the toy box. Sometimes, this devolves into "put three things in, take everything out." But that's ok, too. The point of chores sometimes is not to actually get anything done.
4. Picking up trash outside. If most of the garbage on our street wasn't super yicky (most of it is old fast food wrappers, blech), I believe my son would cheerfully clean the whole block. He also loves to do this at the park. I am trying to be less squeamish about it.
5. Putting leaves onto the compost pile. This one is super fun, because it's outside and a little dirty (but safe dirt, not like someone's old oozy food wrappers, shudder). I show him the pile of leaves and do a couple handfuls as an example, and then I sit down and hang out for fifteen minutes until he gets bored.
6. Wiping down surfaces with a rag. This is purely experimental right now -- I filled an old windex bottle with water and let him practice spraying things. He mostly sprayed his mouth, which filled him with delight. And then he wasn't very interested in wiping anything up. But, we're going to keep trying. If you want to try this, you can start with a damp diaper wipe and see what happens. I'm planning to get those little fingers dusting some hard-to-reach crevices one of these days.
7. Turning on and off the lights. Maybe your kid is content to walk around on his own two feet all the time; mine still has moments when he wants mommy to carry him. And, sometimes wrangling him in my arms is the only way I get his diaper changed (sad but true). So, when he is in my arms, I always ask if he will turn on the lights in whatever room we enter and turn them off when we leave. He loves it.
As I said above, the point of chores with very little kids isn't that they are actually helping you. If they do get anything done, the active supervision and constant re-stating of the goal pretty much wipes out any actual progress. But my son really does love to help -- he beams with pride when he can get his dirty socks into the hamper and he truly believes it is his job to put the clothes in the dryer. It is great fun to see him participate in how we run our house.
