Our WhiteBoard: Daily Chores and My Kids

We ask a lot of our children.  We ask them to do their chores, jurisdictions, piano practice, etc.  With so many children running around it’s easy for one to slip through the cracks and not complete one of their responsibilities.  How do we make sure this doesn’t happen?  Introducing our whiteboard.

The last post I did explaining the children’s chores and jurisdictions I had someone on Facebook ask me to explain how the whiteboard works.

Our White Board

The whiteboard is kept in my son’s room with a little box of colored dry-erase pens in a box nearby.  The board is laid out with the children’s names on the left side of the board and all the jurisdictions written out across the top of the board.

Each jurisdiction has one or two letters underlined.  On Monday, when each child picks their jurisdiction they are to write those letters next to their name so everyone knows what their jurisdiction is.  That way when I see a jurisdiction that isn’t being taken care of I can just look at the board and know who I need to talk to.  On Monday I can also check to make sure each jurisdiction is spoken for.

On the top right side of the board you’ll see a few items written in different colored ink; Piano, Jurisdiction, School Work (my husband intentionally misspelled that word, something about the movie Mega Mind?!), morning chores, and shower).

When the children (or their younger partner) finish something on the board they either put down a check mark or if it isn’t their spot (say, a partner is filling it out for you), then they put their initials in your spot for the item they are marking off.  Depending on what was finished determines the color of the check mark.

In Practice, How Does It Work?

For example, on Monday, when Stephen finishes his school work, Marcel with put a black checkmark (or his initials) in Stephen’s Monday box.  Then, when Catherine finishes her morning chores she’ll put a purple check mark next to her name on the right day.

In the beginning, it sounds a little complicated, even tedious.  However, now that we’ve been doing it for way over a year (years I think) it really has simplified things.  I do have to remind them every so often but that’s OK.  I need to be reminded of things occasionally as well!  🙂

 

Reward System

For the children that finish all their responsibilities (on a weekly basis), there is a reward.  Recently we’ve been taking them skating.  Sometimes it’s a new movie/cartoon that’s on DVD (look into ClearPlay, we won’t watch another movie/cartoon without it!).  One time, due to lack of money and time that particular week, I took them all out to a McDonald’s ice cream cone.  They were thrilled as we never do this!

What Does Your Family Do?

So, there you have it.  That’s how we keep our chore chaos organized.  🙂  How does your family keep track of chores and make sure everything gets done?  I always love new ideas!