If the children did too much it would make the game less challenging. I would love to see them pick mushrooms, after having been shown how, and if they are in the vicinity of the mushroom when it pops up. Maybe instead of just dancing, and other useless things, the children could havea different list of actions that don't necessarily contribute that much to the play of the game itself, but makes them seem a bit more useful. They could pick flowers for the graves, or for random villagers. They could collect seashells.

That jsut gave me an idea. LOL. Art. All cultures develop some form of artistic expression. Kids could collect bits of nature and make little art peices. That would also make an interesting minigame, taking things kids collected, some paint, and making little mosaics or something. Not sure if that belongs in this thread or another.

I've seen several people mention apprenticeships...maybe after the school is built, the children with natural dispositions for certain jobs could help out. Children who have a natural disposition towards farming could "Clean tools" or "Pull weeds", child builders could "Sort Tools" or "Sweep Sawdust", child Healers could "Collect Herbs" and spend their time running between the 4 plants; and it wouldn't necessarily give them a lot of experience points, but maybe give them 1/4 of what the adults would learn. And they wouldn't necessarily have to spend all of their time doing those things. Just like adults, kids could have different personalities when it comes to work, some are lazy and don't want to work, and others are super motivated. Heck, you could even have some of them earn points for parenting later on, by rounding up smaller children and babysitting. Then maybe parenting points could be more than how well (or often) a person breeds.

That would actually be more realisitic, because in a society that is struggling to survive, every member of society is expected to play their part, no matter how small. We struggled when I was a kid, both of my parents worked full time, and I was expected to do work. By the time I was 7 I took care of the pets, swept the floors, helped with the dishes, and scrubbed the bathtubs. As I got older I did laundry, cooked, and a myriad of other more difficult tasks, and the simpler ones fell to my little brother.

Make the children do laundry so the adults can work.