Chore Time!

Trevor has been doing "official" chores for three weeks now.  If you didn't read my post a few weeks about Chores and Allowance you can check out the why and how of what we are doing.

Trevor is always excited in the morning to do his chores and earn his penny (we don't get to them every morning, though). So far, the chores I picked seem to be good for him.  They are challenging enough, but not so hard that they frustrate him.  He can pretty much do ones like dusting and collecting the garbage all by himself (with maybe a little pointing in the right direction), while I pretty much have to hold his hand while he wipes the cloth across the baseboards.  Sometimes he gets frustrated (saying "You do it, mama") a few minutes in, but I just try to encourage him and tell him that he is doing a good job and that it takes time to get good at anything new that you learn.  And of course, his favorite part is getting his penny sticker at the end and putting it on his chore chart.

Here is our chore chart after one week.  (Click here to download your own chart...scroll to the bottom of the page.)  At the end of the week I had him count how many pennies he had earned and I told him that five pennies is the same as one nickel, so he got to put a nickel in the TOTAL column.  Then I gave him five real pennies and asked him if he wanted to trade for my real nickel.  We traded back and forth a few times (I don't think he get's it yet, but it's a good start!)

Next we talked about what it is good to do with the money that you earn.  I started by telling him that it is good to first give some of your money back to God, so he picked one penny to take to church and put in the offering plate.  Then he got to pick two pennies to put in his penny bank to save.  I told him that he isn't allowed to touch those pennies for a very long time.  Last, he put the remaining two pennies in the empty Play-Doh container.  I told him that those he can look at and touch and count because those are the ones that he can spend on whatever he wants!  Little does he know that it's going to take him a LONG time to earn enough pennies to buy ANYTHING =)

So that is how chores have been working in our house these past few weeks.  I really think that they will help teach responsibility and discipline, and help him to start learning to not only think of himself, but to think of those around him too.  Well, I hope it will anyways =)

Happy Cleaning!