More than a Chore Chart: Our Household Economy

To go along with the iPad Pizza blog I posted yesterday, I thought I'd show you our household chore chart as well. :)

I tried to make something a little more than a chore chart. I wanted to give the kids an allowance, but to be honest, I don't want to give them cash (there's little enough of that to go around as it is!). All they can really buy with cash at their age is toys or candy. Having more of either of those things in our house doesn't make me excited (unless the candy is for me). So I decided on creating our own family dollars. This way they can earn dollars doing chores, I don't have to keep a ton of cash on me, and they can "buy" a wider variety of things with their money.

This is our chore chart. So the top listed "Every Day Chores" are the chores they are expected to do without reward. I believe in teaching children that everyone in the family works in order to make the family run smoothly. Sometimes we take care of ourselves (put our own clothes in the hamper) and sometimes we take care of everyone (Mommy does the laundry for everyone to have clean clothes, and Daddy cuts the grass for everyone to enjoy). I explained to them that they get privileges as part of our family team and are expected to do their share of chores as part of that family team as well. If they chose not to do those basic every day chores, they would lose those basic everyday privileges. So at the end of the day, as part of our bedtime routine, we go through and stick check marks on the everyday chores they have completed or not. It's ok to forget once in awhile, or to have a busy day and miss something, as long as it's not a consistent problem, I'm not too strict about it. (The kids LOVE sticking their check marks on the chart, and it makes them more excited to complete their chores- bonus!)

Next we have the list of extra chores they can do to earn money. My kids are only 6 and 4, so they cant do a huge variety of chores, but you could of course tailor yours to your kids' ages. Each chore has a value, and depending on what they want to buy, they can figure out which chores will add up to the right amount of money for them (hooray for sneaking in some math skills!)

Next we have the list of things they can purchase with their hard earned dollars. As you can see, over time we've changed the price on some things. What can I say? Gotta learn about inflation someday! Kidding, what actually happened was that we found they were earning money so fast, that it was appropriate to up the costs of some things. Obviously the privileges are very specific to the family, and you'd want to make your own. Extra "minutes" means lay down time with Mommy at bedtime. Lots of people disagree with laying down with their kids at bedtime and that's cool if that's how you roll. Maybe I'll write another blog one day on why I do it. But for now, all you need to know is that we time the lay down time they get, and they can buy some extra. They can also buy extra pizza slices (one slice equaling 15 minutes) of iPad time. There's a subsequent blog about the iPad Pizzas here somewhere if you're interested. (One day I may learn how to link you to it from here, but not today, you're on your own for now.) We also have established "hang out time with Daddy" for weekday nights. My husband works late a lot and the hang out time became one on one time for the kids with him. They each get 15 minutes of his undivided attention and time per weekday night, no matter what else is going on. It may not seem like a lot, but when you set the time and keep it, it makes a difference. It's usually squeezed somewhere in between baths and bedtime. So they can buy more of this time. They can also buy staying up late, iPad in bed, a trip to the dollar store to pick a toy, and if they both save up enough (we made a rule that we don't go until they've BOTH saved enough to go- no one gets left behind) then we go to Playtrium (our local indoor playground). I'm sure there will be more privileges we can add as the kids get older and their interests expand. Right now I'm very pleased with how it's working to teach them the value of a dollar earned, and to save their money up for bigger and better items.

These are our home dollars. Never underestimate the value of having a good crafting cutter for the busy DIYer mom! I'd recommend this one, if you're interested (I love everything Fiskars related!):


One last note: beware of forgers! I found this (bottom left, in case you couldn't tell which one was the forgery!) in the packet of money one night. Seems legit. ;)

iPad Pizza

I've had several friends visit lately who have been quite impressed by my "iPad Pizzas" I made for the kids. I had a tea party last week (that's right, I had an olde fashioned tea party and ACTUALLY USED MY TEA POT- cool right? It was a wedding gift and hadn't ever been used!) and all the moms took photos of the iPad Pizzas with their phones and specifically asked me to blog about it. So, I guess I better not disappoint.

I'm not much of an enforcer when it comes to screen time. I personally love TV, and we have the TV on a lot, as background noise. My kids barely pay attention to it. If they zoned out and just started at it and didn't play, I'd likely take a different stance. But as it is, we watch a lot of TV. But it's different when it comes to iPad and Xbox. Little Man was just introduced to the Xbox at Christmas, when he was given Skylanders as a gift (Side note: best and worst game ever. I'll blog about it another day.) We have a lot of educational games on the iPad, but I don't like to see them sitting on their butts for hours staring at a screen. With this in mind, we decided on a "one hour per day" rule (that's combined, iPad or Xbox). I thought this would fix all our problems (haha on me) until I tried to enforce it.

The problem with little kids is that they can't tell time. They have very little concept of time. What's five minutes vs one hour to them, right? So whenever I told the kids their hour was up, or they had 10 minutes left, or whatever, they got upset. Fights ensued. Chaos reigned. I tried timing the hour on the oven timer, like we do for taking turns with fought over toys, but they would be unprepared for the end, and not want to stop playing, or they would not use all their time in one sitting, and I'd have to keep track of who had how much time left. They would disagree with my calculations. Fights ensued. Chaos reigned.

Then one day, in a fit of frustration, I sat Little Man down and we drew a pizza on a piece of paper. I said, "Imagine an hour is a whole pizza. If it's cut in four, each slice is 15 minutes. You get four pizza slices per day." We stuck that crude pen-on-back-of-old-grocery-list pizza to the wall with painters tape and that was how we started timing the screen time. Whenever one of them wants the iPad or Xbox, they have to ask me for it. I start the timer for 15 minutes (oven timer, iPhone, whatever). When the timer ends, we remove a pizza slice from the pizza, and they have the option of using another slice, or stopping. I later spiced up the pizzas, made one for each of them, made them more colourful and nicer looking, seeing as they are now a permanent fixture on my living room wall. I also switched from painters tape to velcro for easy on/off of the slices. This is a good place for me to gush about my Cricut cutter. I LOVE my Cricut! Every moms best friend is a machine that cuts perfect little characters and letters for making kid-friendly items. Now if only it also made coffee...

iPad Pizzas are really easy to make. Here's the directions in case you need some guidance to get started:

You will need:

• Large piece of bristol board as your background
• Smaller piece of bristol board for your pizza (you could use construction paper too, but I like the extra sturdiness of bristol board when it's something the kids are peeling on and off repeatedly by themselves)
• Adhesive backed velcro
• Letters (you can write free hand, get sticker letters, stencils, or use your awesome Cricut machine- whatever you choose, the world is your oyster) These are my favourite:

• Markers

What you do:

Use something to trace a big circle. I used a dinner plate. Trace it on the large bristol board and on the small bristol board. Cut out the small one. Cut the small circle into four. Use a marker to draw dividing lines on the large bristol board to show the pizza in four. I coloured each slice on the large board a different pattern. Just because I felt like it. Stick velcro to the backs of the slices, stick velcro in the right spot on the large board (you want your slices to line up with your pizza outline on the large board when you stick them on). Add more velcro to the side of the large board so you have somewhere to stick the used slices. I used letters to add the kids' names, tried to make it purdy, you know the drill.

It's really straight forward to make, all you needed was the idea. Good luck and enjoy!