When something you’ve put on your site has been pinned (on Pinterest) over 180,000 times, it causes you to take notice and reflect. The post is Life Skills. As my children get older, I’m even more aware that my responsibility is to teach and train them, not handle all tasks for them.
How am I doing with teaching my children Life Skills? How are my kids doing? Well…. not so good. We’re about where we left off at the end of the summer.
So, I plan to start monthly goals. No judging – we’ll begin with making our beds. This is something I’ve just never worried about and have let slide because they leave for school before 7:30 a.m. Truth be told, my bed only gets made if my husband does it.
I’ve been reading Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma. She instituted a dollar plan, I’ve knocked it down to a quarter plan.
Quarter Plan
Each boy starts the month off with 1 quarter for each day of the month. January has 31 days, so they received 31 quarters. I poke my head in their rooms daily to see if they made their beds. If they did they keep their quarter, if not, they bring one to me. (it’s much more painful to bring the quarter to mom)
If at the end of the month they’ve kept all their quarters, they can trade it in for approximately $7.00 extra in cash each month. Money talks for my kids, maybe your children would prefer points or pom poms.
We’ll refill quarters at the beginning of the next month and add a new task (probably the bathroom) in addition to making beds. Make sense?
I know it seems like I’m taking very simple steps, but if we have 12 new tasks done and implemented by the end of the year it could be genius!
What would be on your to-do list?
More on Life Skills? Join the Pinterest Life Skills Board here.
In other news, we have had success with setting the table and our nighttime procedure.
Update: So far, everyone has kept their quarters. We’re halfway through the month…. well, 9 days!
Thanks for the post. We’ve recently had our almost 5 year old daughter be in charge of making her bed daily and feeding the dog twice a day and we’ve talked about allowance for it, but this sounds great too! Thanks for the post!
http://thisfineday.com/
I love this idea! I have two older boys, 9 & 13. I think I’m going to modify this to the Dollar Plan. They too are motivated by money/allowance and think this idea would be a great motivator! Thanks for sharing your ideas!
Hello. I was wondering how you handle when they have more then one “chore” to do, if they only do a portion of the chores, do they get a portion of the .25 or it it an all or nothing type of thing?
For February you have towels… Can you elaborate on this a bit please?
Thank you!