As stated in other task descriptions, floors provide many opportunities to be clean. Hard surface floors do not require mopping regularly, especially if you use a Swiffer type of damp mop.

Your child already knows how to operate the stick vacuum on a hard surface which is the essential first step in mopping. It is vital to make sure that the floor is vacuumed well before proceeding to mop.   

There are several different ways to mop floors. There is the old bucket and mop method, where the bucket is filled with warm to hot water and a solution. A mop is dipped in and wrung out as dry as possible, then the floor is mopped. The drawback to this method is that the water does get dirty more often, and sometimes the mopper gets too much water on the floor, so it takes a very long time to dry.

There are a lot of different kinds of mops that wring themselves and many buckets that help with this wringing out. The best mops allow you to take the mop off the stick and throw it into the washing machine.

Another type of mop is what we fondly call the “sucker mop.” It is a hard surface vacuum cleaner with clean and dirty chambers; It squirts out the water solution onto the floor with some scrub brushes that scrub the floor. Then it suctions the floor practically dry. This is my favorite because there’s no mixing clean and dirty water. This cleaning tool usually sucks up any particles you didn’t get up with the stick vacuum. The drawback to this type of mop is that it doesn’t clean edges and baseboards. Children in this age range are a little rough on it as well. 

Whatever tools and methods you decide to use are very much up to you. The heart of this task is for your child to learn how to do it the way you want it to be done. I have found that most kids this age usually do well if they are given just one room at a time to mop. You can assign one room daily and complete most or all of the mopping within a week.