Preschooling and Pretreating

I am new to the world of homeschooling.  My oldest has just entered the preschool years, so we are starting out on more education-focused forms of play.  Since I am beginning my homeschooling journey with very little knowledge on the subject, I have started doing what I do best:  reading and researching.

Currently, I am reading Real-Life Homeschooling: The Stories of 21 Families Who Teach Their Children at Home by Rhonda Barfield.  It is a compilation of personal journeys through homeschooling in various types of families.  It addresses desires, methods, and challenges of homeschooling.  A common challenge of the families in the book is the lack of time to accomplish tasks outside of schooling (i.e. household chores, running errands, etc.).  This boggles my mind.  Shouldn’t teaching these tasks be a part of homeschooling?

Today, my son helped me with the laundry.  We are beginning to give him a very active role in this chore.  First step, we purchased him his very own toddler-sized hamper equipped with handles and a lid in one of his favorite colors:  blue.  Throughout the week we have been enforcing putting his dirty clothes into his hamper, explaining to him that they are dirty and need to be cleaned.

Once his hamper is full, it is his laundry day.  He, himself, carries his hamper into the laundry room and puts his clothes in the washing machine.  Sometimes he can even set the dials and push the start button.  (Due to his love of mess-making, Mommy and Daddy still take the responsibility of adding the detergent.)  Once the laundry is in the washer, it’s playtime until it finishes.  Then we go back in and he takes his clothes out of the washing machine and puts them in the dryer.  His favorite part of this task?  Pushing the start button.
Folding the clothes is obviously difficult at this stage, so Mommy folds an item, hands it to him, and he puts it away in the appropriate drawer.  Biggest surprise?  He loves doing his laundry.

At this age, children rejoice in helping perform tasks around the household.  It gives them a sense of accomplishment and helps strengthen their self-esteem.  Not to mention, it equips them with knowledge of organization and task-orientation which they can use in all avenues of their lives in the future.  Household work, in my opinion, is one of the strongest forms of education, whether or not you choose to homeschool.  Therefore, as a large part of our home preschooling, we enlist our son’s help in laundry, vacuuming (he has his own that really works!), dusting, window washing, and the evening “pick-up” time, along with any “bonus” projects we may tackle throughout the week.

What are your thoughts on childhood chores?  Do you feel they are important?  At what age do you implement responsibilities around the home?