The Chore Olympic Games

This is a fun way to teach kids how to do chores around the house.

This activity works great to teach kids how to do chores and let them practice in a fun way. You can have kids compete against each other, or your family could invite another family to compete, or it can be used with a church youth group. I used this with the activity day girls in my church (ages 8-11).

To begin your chorelympics, divide the kids into teams. Let them come up with their team name and color a flag. Play some music and have them march into the room and take their seats.

With any of these chores, some kids will need instruction and practice before competing. You can either do training right before the event or have a separate training time.

Here are some ideas for events:
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1. Sweeping - Spread bits of paper around the room. Make a square out of tape on the floor. When you say "go" the kids will start to sweep their pieces of paper toward their square. First team to sweep their area clean wins.

2. Sock Matching - set out one laundry basket for each team. Spread single socks around the room. When you say "go" the kids try to match and fold the socks and get them in their basket. The team with the most matched and folded socks in their basket wins.

3. Table Washing - teach the kids how to scoop crumbs into their hand while washing a table instead of pushing them onto the floor in this game. Spread bits of paper on a table. Give a child a dry rag. Start a timer and see how quickly they can wipe all the bits of paper into their hand. Add penalty seconds for each piece of paper that falls on the floor. You can either have the team choose one child to participate or let each child have a turn and combine their scores for the final score. Whichever team has the lowest score wins!

4. Towel Folding - This can be a more creative competition. Choose music all the kids will know (I used "let it go") and give the teams a few minutes to work out their routines. The idea is to fold the towels while dancing. The girls had lots of fun with this one! They were tossing towels in the air and catching them while spinning and being very graceful. Kids will be judged based on how neatly the towels are folded and on their dance routine, just for fun. I let the kids who were uncomfortable dancing sit this one out and just cheer on their team.

5. Toy Sorting - You will need buckets and lots of toys on the ground. Assign each team a toy category (such as cars, dolls, blocks, etc . . .) then see which team can pick up their items and fill up their basket first. Or you can have one team go at a time and do all the categories, and just time how quickly they get things picked up. Add penalty seconds for things put in wrong baskets.

6. Bed Making - You will probably need to be home for this game. Teach the kids how to make the bed nicely, then see which team can do the best job in the shortest time. Bonus points for artful pillow arranging.

7. Table Setting - Teach the kids how to set a table. Set this up as a relay race. Each team has a box with items needed in it. (You will probably want to use plastic dinnerware). When the whistle blows, the first player grabs out the placemat, runs to put it on the table, then runs back and tags the next player who runs over to the table with the plate, and so on. Which team can get their place set first?

This list is longer than what we did at activity days. I only got through 3 activities in the hour, but the girls had lots of fun. At the end they each received a gold medal made from a candy necklace with a chocolate gold coin taped on.

You can make up games for chores you have your kids do around the house, such as mirror washing, toilet cleaning, mopping, etc . . . Once the Chorelympics are done you can continue the fun each chore day by checking their work and giving them a Chorelympic score and see which child rates the highest, or give your whole family a score and track your progress as a family to see if you can improve your house cleaning score from the week before.


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Family Economy

I know I don't post that much. Erin does such a great job, but I sure love reading about everything she's doing with her family, so I thought I'd share what we are going to do this year with our new "Family Economy."




I've got a new job system. I have been through many. I've liked all of them for their time and the ages of my kids. Then I get bored and uninspired and don't follow through and I need something new. I read the book "The Entitlement Trap" by Richard and Linda Eyre and was inspired by their family economy. Our family is going to implement a system of earning, saving, and spending money based on many of the ideas they presented in their book.

Each of the children can earn up to four tickets a day. The tickets are kept on the far right peg of a 5 peg board that was used for a job chart system called Accountable Kids. (That was a good one. We used that job chart for a long time.) The other 4 pegs are where they will hang the tickets after the job is completed.

The first ticket is put on after their "Morning Magic" is completed by 9am. This entails getting yourself up, making your bed, getting dressed, hair, breakfast, teeth, read scriptures, prayer, and ready for homeschool by 9am.

The second ticket is for practicing their instrument.

The third and fourth ticket are for two jobs that will rotate from month to month. That is why they are on sticky notes in the photo, so I can move them around.
The rotating jobs are :
Kitchen- empty dishwasher before breakfast and clear the table and load the dishes after dinner.
Trash/Laundry- On Monday, Wash, dry and put away clothes. On Thursday put the bins out to the curb in the morning and bring them back in at night. Also, take all trash out as needed.
Meal Helper- Help cook, set table or counter, get water for everyone.
Luke's helper- Play with Luke and help him with anything he needs as Mom asks.
Upstairs pick up- Check floor, counters, desks and put everything in its place.
Downstairs pick up- Check floor, counters, desks and put everything in its place.

At the end of the day, the child will put however many tickets they earned into a family bank (just a box.)
They do their jobs for the 5 weekdays and then Saturday is PAYDAY! We will pull the tickets out of the family bank and see how much they earned! The older boys (ages 8 and 9) are earning actual money that will be deposited into their checking accounts at Bank of America. They will pay tithing, put some money in savings, and the rest is for spending. The boys will be responsible from now on for purchasing their own shoes, clothes, entertainment, and gifts.
Eliza (age 5) is earning money to buy a vending machine to put into my husband's store. After she pays that off, she'll probably save up her tickets for specific toys she wants, or TV watching privileges or something. I don't know quite what yet.

I'm looking forward to more help around the house and for the kids to really feel ownership of their money and their things.

Cleaning up the Zoo (a.k.a. our house)

I've been wanting to implement a cleaning system with our kids for a while now but just haven't been able to get it done. With the new school year starting soon, I thought this would be a perfect time to help the kids get into a cleaning routine.

When reading a blog post on Chocolate on my Cranium, I saw that she assigns zones for her children to clean each day.  I liked that idea, but wanted to think of some way to make it sound a bit fun to the kids.  Ya know, 'cause I like to complicate things.  I decided since our house often seems like a zoo anyway, we'd just go with that theme.

I made a map of the downstairs of our house and labeled the rooms as areas of the zoo.


I made little square animal pictures to represent each person in the family.  The kids enjoyed picking out what zoo animal they wanted to be.  We decided daddy should be the lion, because he's the king of the jungle, Maren wanted to be a dolphin, Joshua is a monkey, Christopher is a tiger (I told him he should be my snuggle puppy, but he wouldn't have it), and Nathan is a kangaroo.  He's in a jumping phase right now.  I'm a chicken, or mother hen, because, well, we needed to have a chicken, right?

I made a weekly assignments chart where we put each person's picture so they know what area to clean that week, and a chart with written explanations of what needs to be done in each room to be considered "clean".

Now it gets a little tricky to explain, especially for me because I'm not always good at making sense.    I wanted to encourage our kids to do all the cleaning in their area by themselves in a set amount of time, so I invented different levels of cleaning achievement. I made a chart, and after the time is up, the zoo inspector comes around to check.  Their animal picture gets put on the level they are at currently. The chart is as follows:

zoo animal: does no work
assistant groundskeeper: does less than half of the work
groundskeeper: does most of the work - gets paid 10 cents
zookeeper: does all of the work - gets paid 50 cents
animal trainer: does their work and helps others - 25 cents for each additional area

the kids were all zoo animals until the first zoo inspection

My 6 year old said right away "I want to be a zoo animal" to which I responded "Well, the zoo animals don't get to watch tv, play wii or computer, read books at bedtime, and they have to take a nap during the day and go to bed early.  They also have to wear diapers in the house." (okay, I wouldn't really enforce the last one, but it made him stop and think.)  Finding out that the zookeeper is a paid position also helped him change his mind.  Nathan, of course, will probably be stuck as a zoo animal for a long time.

I know different people have different feelings about paying their kids to help with house work.  I would like my kids to have some money that they earn and are responsible for, to help them learn to work and save, and so I wanted to give them money for a job well done.  Jason thinks room and board should be enough, but I persuaded him.  Maybe 50 cents a day is too much, and if it is, we'll cut it back.  I kind of doubt any of them will make it to zookeeper status within the first month.  They tend to glance over things and not be thorough. I'm hoping the money will help motivate them to be more careful.

I'll be the zoo inspector for now, but I think in the future I'll let them take turns going around and inspecting everyone's work to help them be more aware of what is out of place.  Maybe I'll get a fun hat or zookeeper's vest to help them play the part.

The kids were really excited when I introduced the idea, and insisted I make a map for the upstairs as well, and they wanted to name their rooms.  Maren lives in "book bay" and Joshua and Christopher live in "genius jungle".  Joshua said "Get it Christopher?  'Cuz we're geniuses!"  Sure buddy.  Who was gluing stickers onto the paper earlier?  Awww, cute kids.  Nathan lives in "kangaroo cave", because Maren says his room is small.

We'll try to do our jobs before dinnertime, or after dinner if we have too many afternoon activities. It will probably vary day by day, but hopefully this will help keep the house cleaner, help my kids learn how to work better, and be a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down.  I'll let you know how it goes.

(for more ideas to help make cleaning fun, see this post and this post)


linked to: raising olives

Nickel Clean Up

HI! I'm supposed to be a contributor to this blog, but Erin has been doing a great job all by herself, and she has so many good ideas. But I now have something to share and a few minutes to jot it down for you.

When every flat surface in the house looks like this:

(This photo barely gives a hint at the disaster that we call home.)

Then it's time for nickel clean up. We write each child's name at the top of a piece of paper. We work very quickly and I call out jobs for each child to do. "Andrew- socks, hamper." "Jack- crayons, drawer." There's no time for extra words. They are working quickly to get to the next job. Each job means a nickel for them. They put a tick mark under their name for each job they complete. Each tick mark means a nickel for them when I pay out after the house is clean.

(They were using code names today)

What would have taken me two hours to accomplish alone, takes us 15 minutes, and only costs me a few dollars. Today, they each earned $1.25. It is worth every penny.

I save nickel clean up for days when the house is really bad. For day to day picking up and cleaning, it's the usual nagging. A variation on nickel clean up is jelly bean clean up. We just replace the reward with some little treat. They like that too.

(Ah, a clean house. For a few minutes at least...)