New Chore System

With the start of a new school year, we have organized ourselves a bit more and have started a new chore system. We have our chore chart that we made a while back pictured below. Every time the kiddos get something marked off, they get 1 point. After 10 points are accumulated, they get a Wii/Video Buck, also pictured below, that they can "spend" on 10 minutes worth of video time. That includes Wii, computer, or DS games. So far it is working great. They have a wonderful incentive to get their chores done and then they get to learn how to budget their spending, because of they want to be able to play video games, they need to make sure they have enough "bucks."

Here is the chore chart...

With the 6 kids, each child has their own color. There is a list of things they need to do each day to include make bed, clean room, "chore" which is blank and I can write in the chore for that day with a dry erase marker, a "help mom" space where I can again write something extra for them to do, homework, read, and brush teeth, family scripture/prayer, and personal scripture/prayer. The more things they do each day on their lists, the more points they earn each day. They can spend their Wii bucks only on Friday nights or Saturdays, so they have all week to save up for video game time.

This is a picture of the page full of Wii/Video Bucks that I designed. I just printed off a few pages worth and cut them up into individuals. We then made little pockets that go next to the Chore chart and when they earn their bucks, they go in the pocket for later use.

As you can see, their are chores written on each of their chore spots. These chores include things like Garbage, dishes, vacuum, puppy chores (feeding, taking for walk, outside to go potty etc), set table for meals, clear table after meals, sweep, mop, bathroom sinks, etc. Each day they get a different one. I rotate the "easy" ones between the little kids and the harder ones between the bigger kids. Also, you can see that each one has a few Wii/Video bucks peaking out of their pockets ready for use.

So far it is working out great. I think this is one that we can keep up with. We tried doing different things, but most of the "rewards" ended up being things we have to spend money on, but this is something that is free for us, we already have all of it, etc. It is also a great way to make them earn time to spend on Video games as well as "limit" their usage of video games.