Chart Making

These last couple of months or so I've been thinking a lot about getting Owen to start helping me out regularly with chores so he can learn how to do stuff around the house. I've also been wanting to help him understand money a little better, how it works, why we should save, etc. 

When Owen was three we started letting him pick prizes after he earned a few stickers from going right to bed at night or doing something we'd ask him to do right away, etc. But as he's gotten older, the lines have gotten blurred a little as far as how much he's done and what he's expecting for doing something or helping out. 

It seemed like he starting asking for toys every time we were at a store (reminding me that he slept good or cleaned his room), so then I'd feel like I had to get him something (usually a car or quarter machine toy) so the good things he did weren't going unnoticed or un-rewarded. And basically he didn't understand if he was getting something for behaving well or doing a chore or because he just had money in his pocket, and he hardly ever had enough money to buy something, most of the time we'd just buy it for him, but still it was starting to wear on me that he was not understanding the concept of money and always expecting stuff.

Another thing that I noticed Owen doing more and more is being really bored during certain times of the day, always picking on chase or wandering around asking for something to eat or to watch TV. I fully believe that kids should enjoy their childhood and not be burdened with HUGE tasks and chores cause that comes soon enough in life. But I also feel like having a project to do and learning how to do chores helps kids work towards a goal and will help them later on in life to develop good skills.

I do know I am talking about a 4 year old at this point. haha. So I was trying my best to make everything fun, rewarding and age appropriate.

So the three main things I wanted to target were 

-Chores

-Allowance 

and

-Behavior

 So Saturday I started poking around on Pinterest to see what I could find as far as Ideas for allowance and chore charts. It seems like a lot of people give money to their kids for doing chores, which I think is better than just giving them something because they are 4 or 5 or whatever and developing the concept of getting something for nothing. But on the other hand I don't want to have my children not help me with anything or do any regular chores around the house unless they get money from it! So it's kind of a tricky situation.... 

So I decided to assign some regular daily chores that should be done every-day. For a 4-year old they are things like

Make your bed

Pick up Toys in room and living-room,

Put your clothes away, etc. 

Pretty much the things he should be doing already. Then I added some other things like help me make dinner, sweep the floor, take out the kitchen trash, etc. These are chores that are rotated daily throughout the week and are not expected to do each day.

On the back of each daily chore there is a point value assigned to it. For instance, unloading the silverware is worth three points.

Next, I assigned some allowance chores, and on the back of each chore there is a money value assigned to it depending on the difficulty of the chore. Some are worth .5 cents while others may be .25 cents. These are chores he can choose from as he wishes that allow him to earn a weekly allowance. We decided that allowance would be paid out once a week on Saturday.

I know at this point I will mostly be teaching him how to do these things, and most all of them he will have to do with my help for now, but I'm hoping he will get the hang of it soon and also be a little more aware of picking up after himself more often so his chores aren't so hard.

I left a section on the bottom of chart to tally points for chores that are put back up each day like "make your bed."

This is what the chart looked like today after everything was completed. He chose to do more chores to get more points. He still hasn't chosen an allowance chore yet, I think it might just take some time and him running out of money for him to grasp the concept of wanting to earn more money. :)

We made up a little "home store" as we call it, with lots of little treats or toys that he can choose from. We decided to open our little store on Wednesday and Saturday. And he can use his hard earned points from doing chores to get something. Today he had 27 points saved up, but instead of getting something worth 20 points, he asked me if he could do some more chores to get something with a blue star on it (worth 35 points).

I got a lot of stuff out of the dollar bins at Target, and I will probably keep things stocked up from the dollar store too. I thought this would be a fun incentive for doing chores. 

Owen with his glow sticks he picked today! He was so excited!

Next thing I worked on making up are Super Cards or Reward Cards. These are things I give him for Good Behavior such as going right to bed without putting up a fight, sharing toys and playing nice with Chase, finishing all of his daily chores, and other times when I see him behaving really well without being asked to.

There are also warning cards and consequence cards which take away from the super cards. So at the end of each day, we add up the super cards and subtract the warning and consequence cards, and that is what he has left. It has seemed to really helped encourage him to behave well and he has also been more aware of not acting up so he doesn't get the No-So-Super Cards. 

Warning cards and consequence cards work the same as giving a verbal warning or giving a consequence, like time-out. I don't threaten him all day that he's going to get a consequence card, it he acts up like throwing fits or hitting chase after being asked to stop, he will get a consequence card! 

Some of the things he can redeem his Super Cards for are
playing games on the Iphone or computer
inviting a friend over, etc. 
I tried to think of things that he likes or would like to do without using everything we do, like going to parks, bike-riding, TV, playing at the mall, etc. for rewards. I didn't want him to feel like everything we do is a reward. Besides, those are things I like to do and wouldn't be able to be consistent with him earning them since we do those things a lot.

Money

I thought this Idea of keeping a register for Fun, Savings and Tithing was great. I made a register for Chase too, although he is still way too little for any of this, but sometimes he gets money for Grandma and Grandpa and whatnot and at least we can start keeping track now, so it will be easier once he's a little older.

Owen has been really excited to pay his tithing and keep track of his money. He is paying tithing, then putting 40% into savings, and the rest is his money to spend. We decided we'd keep track of tithing each time he got money, but then only take it to church to pay it once a month.

It was kind of a lot of work to get all of my thoughts organized as far as what I was looking to do with all of this. I spent about 2 hours on Pinterest and linking blogs and about an entire day making the charts, but then once I starting making stuff and putting it together, everything started to make sense into what I really wanted to create! 

So far we are both enjoying it and I love seeing Owen accomplish things, hopefully we can keep this up and it will help him be able to understand that he needs to work for things and be able to learn to save up money or points for good and better things as well! :)