The Spies Have Invaded!

Today the house looked unusually messy after a long day of school. (Okay, it looked as messy as it always does, but let's pretend it was unusually messy.) I've tried a million different things to get my kids motivated, but they don't seem to last very long. I thought today would be another great day to find a new motivation.

So, we started by whispering to each other. I had each child pick up one thing in the room but they had to do it while no one was watching and sneak it out of the room. This was pretty fun for awhile, but soon they were watching each other closely.

That's when I switched gears. Suddenly I would shout out things like, "Oh, look at that bird outside!" and motion to one of the kids to sneak something out of the room while the rest looked for the imaginary item outside. The rest of the kids, who knew someone was playing the "spy," played along and hammed it up. "What is it? Oh, I can't see it!" they would squeal as they watched the "spy" out of the corner of their eyes. Hysterical.

Then I got into the fun. It became a game of "The Spies Have Been Here." Every time I would turn my back or close my eyes or get a drink of water, the "spies" would remove a few other items from the room. Then I would mention something that needed to be put away and then look up at the ceiling or search for the imaginary spider in the corner or take a quick nap as one of the kids (or all) would sneak the item out of the room and put it away. Soon I had the kids moving furniture so I could vacuum, doing dishes and cleaning up garbage that normally they wouldn't touch.

My "spies" cleaned the room in record time, and with smiles on their faces. I threatened to put out "spycatchers" and told them to make sure the spies didn't take anything else and put it away, but that only fueled them to do more.

And now the room is spotless, the dishes are washing in the dishwasher, and the kids are happy and proud of their accomplishment....uh...I mean, proud of the spies' accomplishment.

The one drawback of this game? Once the spies stole the baby (Ammon removed her from her playpen and hid with her in the corner). At that point I had to be more specific about what the spies could and couldn't take and where the stolen items belonged. But in general, it was good that the spies invaded our house today.