Chore Cards, Good to Keep Your Life on Track!!
Once upon a time, there was a mother who had 4 children. She wondered why her house was always trashed and she always felt behind! She decided that it was because she and her children were not doing their work in a routine. They would wait until one room got so bad that it would take all day to clean it! So she set out to make some chore cards out of index cards and crayons for each child along with a pocket chart on the wall where they could move their To Do cards to the Completed slot. Things were amazing for a while, the chores got done quickly because they had not let it get too far out of hand! The children were extremely motivated to get their chores done quickly so that they could do other things that they loved! Well, something happened and this mother FORGOT about those chore cards! They got out of the habit of using them. She had 2 more babies and kept not using them, wondering why it was so hard to keep her house in order AND get the kids educated. She could all but forget about getting anything done on her many sidetracked hobbies as she was always swimming in chaos, trying to keep her home running.
As I’m sure you guessed, that mother was me! Why oh why do I find something that works for me and then quit using it? I have a problem with not being perceptive. I tend to not notice things, sometimes not until they’re way out of hand. My children will be arguing and I won’t notice…until they’re so loud they’re on my nerves! or the table is getting cluttered and I won’t notice until it’s trashed! It’s something I’m slowly getting better at, but sometimes I have to really force myself to notice things.
Last week, I decided it was time to revamp our chore cards. I started by pulling out my list of chores that we need to be doing in order to keep our home running in a mostly orderly manner. I decided I wanted them a little nicer looking this time and that I would print them. I wanted to paste some clipart on each card, to fancy it up a little and to give my early reader a good guess at what it’s going to say. I had planned to print it on cardstock and cut them out, but discovered I was out of cardstock, so instead, I printed them on regular paper and glued that to an index card. A little more work, but my little helpers were eager to play in the glue anyway! We don’t have a color printer, so ours are just grayscale. I figured that they could color them in if they want to pretty them up a little more! I had planned to hole punch them and put them on a ring so they could carry them around the house while doing their chores, but the kids said no to that idea. They want them to where they can put it into the completed folder, so they felt like they had accomplished something!
Here’s an example of what a few of them look like:
My children won’t be doing every one of these every day. Some of them will be split up according to what they’re able to do. Some things, I may have in their chart to do but if I get to it first, they won’t have to do it (that always excites them! LOL). Some of them, if we’re having an extra busy day, we’ll skip! It’s not a rigid rule, it’s a routine….one that helps me out by great measures to stay on track at remembering what we’re supposed to be doing! I plan to make some more for my 2 year old with some vey easy chores on it and some more specific ones for me as well.
Now it’s time to start using them!
Would you like to use my cards instead of having to recreate it? You can do so by going here or here.
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