We have been on summer break for about 3 weeks now. I wanted to get the summer chores enforced and our new summer schedule going when we got back from Reno a couple weeks ago, but I had a hard time getting my act together and wanting to enforce chores. I've been working on finishing up all the "paperwork" to go along with our schedule and chores and I finally got it up on Friday. I'm still working out the kinks and I'm sure I'll change things up as the summer goes along. It's all about trial and error, right? :)
I am excited about this post, despite the fact that ! I am not that great about making my kids do chores. Those things that are so much easier for me to just do them and get them done quickly, you know them, right? I'm not one of those moms that has to have chores done PERFECTLY, but I am one of those moms that doesn't want to stand around all day waiting for my kids to finish their chores.
SO, I went to the good old World Wide Web and did a Google search for Summer Chore Charts and Ideas. I found SO many good ideas and I wanted to do EVERY SINGLE one of them! BUT I had to choose just one, so my kids wouldn't get too overwhelmed, and so that I wouldn't either. There were two that really stood out to me and I kind of tweaked them to make them my own.
The first blog I went to was Organizing Made Fun. Becky is a GREAT blogger! She is one of the blogs that I LOVE to get daily emails from. I loved her idea of having the kids earn Media Minutes and I downloaded her 2 printables from her summer chore post. I know these will work great for my boys! they LOVE to just sit around and watch show after show after show. I'm not going to have ANY of that this summer!! I'm going to be on top of my job!!
The next blog I found was called Just Organize Yourself. I loved her summer chore post because it linked to a bunch of great ideas for chore charts. She goes into more detail on how she does her chores and lists in this post.
There were SO many more blogs that I found with great ideas! There were too many for me to read them all. A couple more I liked were Chicken Babies, Raising a Healthy Family and Homebody, she does a 3 part series called Summer Plan Mini Series:
*Rules and Consequences
*Kids Chores
*Fun Stuff
I also went on pinterest, of course!! I have already pinned a bunch of ideas and there was one that I'm definitely going to do, FINALLY! I've had it pinned ever since I opened my account I believe! LOL You can view my summer chore board HERE.
Chore Punch Cards ( I printed some off on my computer with cardstock and cut them out. Each kid starts the week out with one card and for every chore he does all the way AND the RIGHT way he'll get a punch. Once the card is full he can cash it in for a prize. I have a prize box in my craft room that is overflowing. I've been saving up stuff for a while now.)
Chore Cards (I actually bought these cards a couple years ago. It was only $1.50 and she had them all written up and I didn't have to do any work. I have never actually put them into use though so they are now going to come into play; although, I did tweak them to fit my needs. Each boy picks a chore card for the day and they also have to do one Kitchen job as well as all their morning and evening routine chores. The routine chores don't count for the punch cards, though. Just the cleaning chores count. Depending on what Chore they are assigned on a certain day, they can earn more than 2 punches. I'm very optimistic that this will work!)
Are you ready to see all these things in ACTION??!! I have been hard at work in the last week getting everything organized and together and I am really proud of how it all turned out! It wasn't anything fancy like some of the chore charts I admired on Just Organize Yourself, but it was easy and I didn't feel overwhelmed by it. This week we will definitely be using all of these things I have talked about in this post, starting TODAY! I can't wait! (Is it weird that I'm excited about getting my kids to do chores? I'm sure I will hate it after 10 seconds of instigating it! LOL)
This is what the chore area has looked like since school got out, pretty bare.
And this is what it looks like now! What do you think? I laminated all the chore cards and then taped them onto the metal board with washi tape. I've been itching to use some of it and thought it was a pretty good idea to use it for this little project:) I got the idea for this on this blog and made it my own.
So, this is how I've thought it out, each kid has a pocket. They will always have an Evening and Morning checklist in their pocket so they can check everything off and get it initialed by Mom or Dad. At the beginning of each day I will have them randomly choose between 2 chores. I will assign who gets what kitchen chores. The Mom's Choice chores will be done when needed. I'm not really sure if I'll let those ones be a weekly thing or just when I feel like having them do it. That's why they got a separate category.
These are all the chore cards I have printed up.
I have the media minute tickets in the blue holder that has the stickers and pencils, etc.
I found this cute calender on a blog while I was browsing summer chore charts. I edited it to fit our schedule.
These are the Chore Punch Cards I did up. I used a different color at the bottom for each boy, depending on what their favorite color is. I'm planning on throwing these out after they are filled up so I did not laminate them. If you want a free copy of these you can download them HERE.
We are hard at work keeping up with our new summer schedule and doing chores this morning. I will be back next week with a progress report :) Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a great Monday!
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