I had posted a picture a few weeks ago of Emma that happened to be in front of our "door jobs." I had a few emails about it, so I thought I would do a post about my job chart. It's actually worked really well for the last few months, and it was somewhat of an accident that I came up with it. So here's a bit of a long-winded explanation. :)
Last summer I had to think of something fun for the kids to help them get their chores done, and help me to not go crazy nagging them about cleaning. I hated printing individual chore charts, so In came the cleaning game. I had just taken printable business cards, written all of the jobs that needed to be done, and then the kids added a few fun things (5 minute dance party, reading break, etc.) They also really like mopping and windows and dusting, so those were fun ones to pick as well. Anyway, we would just take turns picking a card, and everyone would go to that room to help clean up. We still do that every Saturday. The kids are a little less excited now, but once I ask if they would rather do it alone, they are on board again. :)
So our door jobs came about when one day I had put the cards up on our front door with some disc magnets as a way to keep track of what we had done, and what we were working on. The kids really liked it, so I switched it up a little bit and wrote down a few of their other daily jobs, and so the door jobs were born.
Yesterday I got busy and made them look really nice. The little girls were having trouble because they couldn't read the cards, so I added some random pictures of each of the rooms or tasks. I had most all of them in my photos already, so it was a quick project. I just used the printable business cards to make the white part, and then taped them to the colored index cards and went to have them laminated at our local educational supply store.
So here's the full view of the door jobs. Each kid is listed with their jobs. Emma and Michael have their homework and reading as their jobs, and then Emma has piano and one room, and Michael has two rooms. The nice thing about this process is that the rooms never get really messy when the kids are straightening them up each afternoon. We do the big cleaning on Saturdays, but E&M know to get the vacuum or dust if it looks really bad.
Yesterday I found these super cute sticker charts at Learning is Fun. They have 26 spots, so we discussed it last night and decided that when the kids have it completely filled up, they can turn them in for $6. (It was $5, but Michael is quite a good negotiator.) :)
You can see the pictures a little better here. I used a template in Pages (a Mac version of Word) and think they turned out really cute. The only part I'm still working on is little glass marble magnets that say "Finished" for them to put on top of the cards when they do that job. (We used to just flip them over, but now I stuck magnets on the back of these cards...)
Anyway, the other part of their daily "chores" is their Routines. I got this idea from this post at New Nostalgia I even used the website she suggested for the charts. I did customize ours a bit from what she has, but so far it's worked really great. The kids know what they should do when I say "go do your routines!" and it's easy for me because I'm not constantly nagging them.
They do not get any money for their routines, but I do give them a small candy treat (usually a lifesaver of small candy bar.) if they do it well without me asking or having to remind them.
Hope this is helpful for someone out there. I know I've been through MANY different chore chart versions, and so far, this one has worked the best, and for the longest. Hopefully someone can learn from all of my trial charts. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment