it's a hard-knock life

i made chore charts for the boys today.
and by made, i mean i filled in the blanks and printed them off.

i wanted something easy to help the boys be responsible for their daily tasks without me having to nag at them.  
something tangible.  


i tried making my own on excel. 
at first i thought, "oh this is easy.  good thing i know how to use excel."

then i realized i hate excel and it's stupid and bleh.  
okay, that's a little harsh.  
i just need to stick to things like email and facebook. 
things for smart girls like me. :)

so i went a searchin' on the world wide web.
and i found things like this:

ummm, no.
then, the skies parted and i found this gem.
yes, please.

{photo source}

how fun is that?  love it. 

the awesome thing is it's a free download and you just enter your own info.

it's super easy.  

even techno-geniuses like me can manage it.

  

i made one each for avery & fin.

i entered their daily tasks.

then i slipped them into page protectors & hung them on the fridge.

i plan to have them use a dry erase or vis-a-vis marker to check off when they've completed a job.

then we can just wipe off and start fresh the next day! 

i think the boys will love getting to do this themselves.

hopefully having it right there in front of us will help us all be accountable.
and these aren't even really chores so much as daily tasks.  
just things they need to do everyday without me telling them. 

although the way they can destroy their room in 5 minutes flat would suggest otherwise.

i'm trying to come up with different reward systems to go along with this.

i'm thinking of printing off a blank sundae coloring sheet and when they check off all of their 

circles, we'll color one part of the sundae for that day.  

when the sundae is totally colored, we'll go out for ice-cream.

if you've ever taught school or been in a classroom in the last 10 years, you know what i'm talking about.

i'll try to do something new each time they earn a reward...maybe marbles in a jar....fill the jar full & get the reward....something like that....
i'm torn....
i don't want to go heavy on rewards, b/c these are things they need to do anyway as part of the family.
but i think it would also be good incentive to get them done.
i'm thinking as i write....but maybe we'll do a short term reward like the sundae to get them started.
and then a long term one like a jar full of something after that.

i also did a sheet for "extra chores."  

these are going to be for saturday chores.  

they can pick any two from the list to do before they can play or watch a show, etc.

again, that way i don't have to nag them to do a job.

they have ownership by getting to pick their job.

if you're still reading, congratulations, even i'm bored now.


so what about y'all?  anyone have any good suggestions for teaching your kids to do chores?

any methods you've used with success?  
i'd love any pearls of wisdom.

 

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