i admit it openly. i am not good at making my children clean
up. i don’t clean up, so i guess they figure they don’t need to either, right?
but the countless number of cars and barbie parts scattered across my floor are
enough to make me want to get rid of every toy in my house. every. toy.
but seeing as we, and other people, have spent money on
these great little foot jabbers, it would be nice to keep them for more than
week before i toss them out in a way that would make buzz lightyear tremble in
fear. so as i scoured pinterest one day i came across an idea for a chore
chart.
and since my 5-year-old is greatly motivated by anything quarters
and dollars, i thought i could make a chore chart where the kids could earn
money for doing things they should already do anyway. but whatever, don’t
judge.
so here is what i made:
it really was pretty simple to make. i bought myself a shiny
new cookie sheet and used my old one for this project (win/win!). i went to a
local store and got yellow spray paint and sprayed that sucker down. allow it
to dry a day or two before doing anything else with it, but that will give you
time to make the other parts.
then i had to think of chores and how much each was worth. i
will tell you, i apparently overpriced some of these things because in one day
my daughter made off with $2.50 from doing all the chores. be cheap!
i got magnets and would be sticking each chore onto a magnet
to put on the cookie sheet. still with me? good! i started off printing the
chores out onto little circles, but then i remembered that my children can’t
read yet, so i had better use pictures. then simply cut out the little circles and
glue them onto the magnets (i used my xyron sticker maker, but use what you
have).
since i have two children, i needed to make a side for each
child. i pulled out my cricut and made their names, again using the xyron
sticker maker to put adhesive on them.
simply put the names where you want them (or just one name
if you are only doing this for one child – but seriously, make them all do chores).
i then used bright colored duct tape to divide the areas for each child and the
chores to be done. voila!
now each child can do a chore and slide the appropriate
magnet over to his or her side and at the end of the day we pay them. like i
said before, though, one day my daughter managed to make $2.50. my son, on the
other hand, is not nearly as motivated by money and really doesn’t care about
cleanliness or money.
did the chore chart save our home from the producers of
hoarders being called in? not really, but it was fun to make and it has
motivated the kids to help with the dishes and make their beds a little more. so
i’ll call that a win!
allison is a stay-at-home mom of two, a biological daughter who is 5 and an adoptive son who is 4. she is also wife to one husband (and one is plenty, thank you very much), who is 31. when not blogging or ignoring her children’s pleas to help find their shoes again, allison can be found attempting to write novels in what little spare time she has left between facebook, twitter, pinterest, and, you know, parenting. she is the genius behind the blog “a few sprinkles short of a sundae.”
