I asked about it on Facebook; what kind of chores do your kids do, do you pay allowance, how are chores doled out and do they rotate. This started my 5 day journey into blog land/parenting books/ late night lying awake in bed thinking of the best way and I think we've found it.
I'm not kidding. It's been almost a week since I started thinking about it. I know the kids are going to love making a little money so they can buy Christmas gifts for each other so I wanted to do something a bit more complicated. Things you get paid for, things you don't get paid for, things we do on the weekend. Things we do during night time clean up.
First I have jars that have our "daily" popsicle sticks in them. When the kids get up all their colors are pointing down. They draw one chore and do it then turn the colored side up. They cannot pick which chore to do, they have to do the one they draw. Their chores are make your bed, get dressed, brush your teeth, do your hair, pick up toys, and put away your laundry.
You can see Sam's chores (far left) are not completed but Molly and Joe's are.
Clean laundry baskets.
We have house chores too. These are kind of the same way only they chose just one stick. There are 5 sticks; Living room, dinning room, hallway, bathroom and helper. Even Lucy will draw a stick and whoever draws the helper stick will help her, unless she draws the helper stick then she will help me.
Weekend chores (I didn't take a picture of them - you get the idea; they're yellow) are done on Saturday and you actually get a reward - one hour of screen time. Half an hour is a little bit too short since they only have screen time one time a week. The first person to get their chore done get to pick computer or x-box. They can use their hour between lunch and dinner.
Allowance is still a little bit vague because we haven't decided exactly how to distribute it but for now we're putting their allowance on a gift card to Target, since we mostly shop there.The kids will get their money at our Family Meeting on Monday night and we will help them put some in savings, some in spend and some in "give away". We have had one too many mistakes of lost money and tears and frantically looking everywhere so I feel confident in the gift cars. They will have little ledgers at home that we'll help them keep balanced. They will bring their receipt home and return the debit card to it's pocket in front and then we'll write in the receipt. Sam gets $5.00, Joe gets $4.00 and Molly gets $2.00 (their age minus $1.00) we'll change it in the future.
Once I get their books finished then I'll post pictures (maybe, if I remember)
Today I'm thankful for kids who are finally old enough to be responsible!! This age has already been fun but now with more than one kid to boss around this place is sure to look cleaner... right?
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