The Lucky Jar - The kids just started new charts today. If the kids accomplish all of their jobs for a given day they get to pick something out of the Lucky Jar. But only on Fridays. If they do every job every day they get to pick out of the lucky jar five times. The lucky jar has slips of paper that give them special snacks, special time with mom or dad, stay up late minutes or 'skip a job' passes for the coming week. The kids can hardly wait.
Easter Egg Moola - I've already thought of April's job fun too. Same charts but instead of picking from the Lucky Jar they will pick a plastic easter egg. Each egg will contain a coin... penny, nickel, dime or quarter. My kids will love this since they don't get allowance and love to have their own spending money.
Bomb in the Kitchen – Set the oven timer for x amount of minutes. Work hard to get the kitchen cleaned and out of the room before the bomb goes off... otherwise you need to make a dramatic death scene on the kitchen floor. Make sure to add more time than you think. The best part of this game is standing at the edge of the clean kitchen and thinking of things you need to ‘run in’ and do without dying. (My brothers and sister and I used to play this game growing up when my parents weren't there and we had to clean the kitchen. I don't know why we had to have a clean kitchen before it was blown up... it's just the way you play!)
Train Cleaning – This is emily’s favorite and mine too. I am the engine. The kids line up behind me. I point to something on the floor and the one right behind me gets out of line to put it away and then hops to the back of the line again. I try to go so fast that I don’t have any ‘cars’ behind me. We choo-choo through the house looking for whatever needs to be put away.
‘Set the timer’ Cleaning – This is when all of us clean together and it usually involves a few rooms... like our family room, entry and kitchen which are all connected. We set the timer for 20 minutes and work until the buzzer goes off. If I see the kids distracted or not working I add a minute. The kids love knowing exactly when they will be done with the job.
Sticks in a jar – We have a job jar with Popsicle sticks sticking out of it.. without looking, the kids pick out what their job will be... in our jar we have: clean around the lockers in the garage, clean out the van, family room, Luke’s room, kitchen floor (toys and sweep), Mom’s bathroom, unload the dishwasher, stairs, entryway and hallway.
Sticky note choices – when the kids come home from school, (or on Saturday mornings) the kitchen island is covered in sticky notes. One job is on each... some easy, some hard. Starting with the youngest they pick their jobs, one at a time. My kids love this one because they are different every day depending on what I need done. I always try to add fun and silly ones, like “tell your mom she’s great” because of course I always need words of affirmation, or “play outside with Luke” which actually is a big help to me but they think they are lucking out.
Countdown Cleaning – “Kids, I need everyone to pick up 10 things in the ____ room.” Once done they come give me a high five. Then I tell them to pick up 9 things. Then 8... then 7... etc. They start giggling when they are down to the end and they have to keep running to give me five between every one.
Movie Pause Cleaning – Put on a movie for the kids... who doesn’t love this already? Explain that whenever you push pause on the movie they have to quickly put 10 things away and then run and jump back on the couch so the movie can start again.
Erase a Job – Have a list of jobs ready for each kid. Tell them that if they clean the first thing good enough that it passes ‘mom inspection’ then they can cross off the last job on the list... and so on. Ryan likes this one.
Summer Point System – Katie’s favorite. This is quite the long involved system but once in place works like a charm... especially in reducing the murmuring of the older kids. Double points for a happy attitude. Check out this post for all the details. We started out the summer on this and even did it over Christmas holidays as well since the kids were asking to do it again.
Charts, Charts and more Charts – Nothing like a fresh clean chart with spaces for happy faces or stars or check marks to get you motivated again. Every couple weeks we do a new one. Each kid has their own list – usually how old you are is how many jobs you have. Make some of them really easy.
Go for the Gold... Olympic Chart – During the Olympics last year we had a Go for the Gold Chart. If the kids did 9 or 10 of their list everyday they got a gold at the bottom... 7 or 8 a silver... 5 or 6 a bronze. At the end of the week we counted up who got the most golds and silvers to see who was the overall best Olympian.
5 things away before Snack – Megan is notorious for asking for snacks 10 times a day. Each time she asks I say “Put away five things and then you can have a snack.”
Mom bucks – For every job the kids do they get rewarded with ‘monopoly money’ (aka: mom bucks). The better they do the more they get. When they are ready to redeem, each mom buck is worth ten cents (or a nickel or an m&m or whatever you want...)
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Believe me, we are more shocked than you are.
our house
the trees in our front yard
bushes in the backyard
