Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Chore Chart for Beginners

Beginners at doing chores, that is. I've often asked my kids to help with this or that, but before I was on bed rest for 4 months, the boys didn't even dress themselves, or (ew, sorry) brush their teeth daily. I figured that with school starting soon, it was time to change that.
Someone gave me this great, medium-sized, whiteboard a while back and I knew just what I wanted to do with it. Using only Microsoft Word and their included graphics, I created this chore chart. Then I printed it on a transparency, and attached it to the white board by sticking the edges of the transparency under the lip of the front of the white board and two pieces of tape just to be sure. Then Richard found these magnets at the office supply store which were just white, but using colored Sharpies, they were easily turned into color coded markers for each child.

The chores on the list are hardly even "chores". They're really just daily basics. But the point of this for our family is to train the kids in two things. One, taking the responsibility each day for getting themselves ready. And two, the idea of having chores at all which need to be done before the fun stuff happens each day. Once they master these things, it'll be easy to swap out the transparency with some more advanced chores.

For now, for us, this is perfect.

2 comments:

angela michelle said...

omg I LOOOOVE it!

and you did this from bed??!!

Wendy said...

Me too!