Ways to Encourage Helping

I have struggled with “chores.” I hate the word. Truly. Using it makes me feel like a mean old geezer. I would much rather encourage my children to see what needs to be done and learn to do it cheerfully. Towards that end, I have been scouring the internet, friends, Pinterest, and my own creativity, as well as that of the girls, to come up with something that might work.

So here is what we are going to be trying out. There are 30 different cards, each with a different task on it. I printed them and they will get laminated as soon as we can get to Mardel’s to do so. The cards will go in a pocket on a chart we keep on the pantry door in our kitchen. There are two pockets there. One is for the “need to do” cards. This is where all of the cards will start out.

Each child, as well as myself, will strive to complete a minimum of two tasks each day. Any card in the “need to do” pocket is up for grabs so each person can choose something that they want to do or they saw that needed done. Once they have completed the task, they will use a dry erase marker to put their initial on it and place it in the “I helped!” pocket.

If it is a task that needs done daily, I will make sure they get done by the end of the day and then put them back in the “need to do” pocket. If it is something that needs done once a month, I’ll leave it in the “I helped!” pocket until the beginning of the next month. An example of this is cleaning the ceiling fans. Otherwise, these are weekly tasks. Or at least that is the goal.

Hopefully, this will make a difference in the amount of helping that gets done without my pleading or even asking. I am hoping this will help them all become more aware of all that needs done in our home. I have included a copy of the cards that I made for this. I also left a link to the TPT store of the lady who was gracious enough to allow us free access to her frame set if you want to print your own with more personalized tasks. If you use our idea in a blog post, please link back here but do feel free to use this idea. Hopefully it will work for you, too.

chore chart labels

I don’t know how this will work out but I am hopeful. The girls all had input on this system so perhaps with all of our brains working together we have come up with a system that will work for all of us. I’ll let you know after we’ve worked with it for a bit.

At Home.

Tagged: home, life