Motherhood has taught me a lot about myself...basically that raising children is unpredictable, and I'm always questioning what to do next.
This section of the blog will help contain my mommy brain ramblings. Behaviour, play, chores, development, products, etc...it will all be here.
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The Chore Chart
I very clearly remember my mom going through MANY different versions of chore charts when I was younger. Let's face it: keeping a house is hard work, and doing it WHILE taking care of kids (and shuffling them to all of their different activities) is just a pain, in general. There are a lot of jobs to be done.....and not enough of Mom's hands to do them.
Enter the chore chart. This magical piece of paper (in our case, posterboard) that somehow manages to lighten Mom's load..........or at least, that's the goal!
We implemented this chore chart about a year ago with our boys, and it's still going strong. As their ability to do more and more difficult tasks develops, I simply add to the different chore cards that are attached to their name. Here's how it works:
On our fridge hangs our beautiful chore chart:
Each boy has his own row of the chart, and (right now), three velcro stickers. There is room to add plenty more in the way of Velcro, and as their ability grows....so will their Velcro!
There are two columns: One for chores that need to be done, and another for tasks that are finished. As each boy accomplishes his task, he moves the chore "card" from one column to the other. They know that they are expected to finish their assigned tasks on a daily basis, and when they do that, they will get their allowance. Now, allowance for us is a quarter per day.... kind of. They earn a PAPER quarter for each day of accomplished chores. Twice a month (ahem...on each payday), they can cash out their paper quarters for cold, hard cash. This allows me to not have to worry about having cash on hand, AND teaches the boys patience. When they cash out their money, they are expected to put some into our piggy bank for Emmanuel, a Rwandan boy that we sponsor.
A sampling of our chore cards, and a picture of the paper money that we use on a daily basis.
Some of these chores (namely, anything that is cleaning a spot of the house, like the playroom or bedrooms) have multiple chore cards. This allows me to force a deep clean of something (like the playroom), by having all three boys assigned to that room. If all three boys have the same chore, they know that they are expected to do an incredibly thorough job of cleaning that area.
So far, this chore chart is working beautifully for us. Feel free to steal the idea! :-)
