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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Do It Door

I was so inspired by reading about another HSing mom's task with getting her children ON task with completing their chores. I don't feel that it is my job as a mother to nag them. It is my job to teach them to be self-sufficient human beings that love the Lord and live for His purpose. It's also my job to teach them how to ultimately take care of themselves... to do laundry, keep their messes controllable, pick up after themselves and not take others for granted.

Right now, we're in the mode of taking mommy for granted. I, too, am instituting the "Do It Door" at my house. (As soon as I find the post of hers, I promise I'll link back to it).

What this ultimately consists of is a door with a checklist of sorts of the children's expectations for the day. Since I have a non-reader, I also made sure there were colorful pictures to go with the Do-It Door commands.

Josh's Daily Routine and Chore Chart is colorful and has two columns... Morning and Evening. His morning consists of:
  • coming downstairs (on his own) by 7:30 a.m.
  • eat breakfast
  • clear the breakfast dishes and wipe the table down
  • get dressed to the shoes and put away pajamas
  • make bed
  • brush teeth
  • bring dirty laundry down and take clean laundry up and put it away immediately
  • do ASSIGNED chores (notice that the above is basically just a routine for him to get into) for 15 minutes
  • be ready for school by 8:30 am (if he's ready earlier, he can start school earlier which lets him finish earlier and thus, he gets to do more fun stuff!)

His evening consists of:

  • straighten the living room
  • straighten the dining room (this is usually where a lot of school projects wind up)
  • straighten your classroom (he has a habit of leaving his workboxes out)
  • finish your assigned chores (many of the chores he is assigned can't be completed first thing in the morning, they are more afternoon chores so this is just a reminder in case he didnt' finish)
  • change into pj's, put dirty clothes in the clothes basket, brush and floss teeth
  • bedtime stories and prayers

Drew's is pretty much the same thing.

These will be laminated and taped to the pantry door at their level -- so they are out of sight but since we're ALWAYS in the pantry, they'll never be out of mind. :)

There is a space for a Velcro dot next to each picture of the chore. I will have hanging from a hook a little bag of round dots with checkmarks inside. Once they complete the chore, they put a checkmark on the Velcro dot. They can see at any time what all they have left to do so I don't have to nag about anything.

Now... they each have "assigned" chores to do on a daily basis. I haven't decided just how I'm going to use these. I'm thinking of attaching clips to the door and then just clip these inside the clip each day and let them use velcro dots on this OR potentially having these being utilized with a wet erase marker. Either would work... or, they could be hanging from a hook if I hole punched the top and placed them on a ring. I'm thinking the velcro would work best for this, too... just keep it all simple and avoid any wet erase marker on the door! :)

Chores on Monday

Josh: clean your room, empty the dishwasher, empty the trashcans in each room, take recycles to the garage

Drew: clean your room, feed/water the doogs, put the thigns in your basekt away (we keep a basket at the foot of the stairs that accumulates anything that has made its way downstairs from the playroom), set the table

Chores on Tuesday

Josh: bring trashcans to garage, feed/water the dogs, set the table, put the things in your basket away

Drew: empty the dishwasher, put the things in your basket away, take recycles to the garage

... you get the picture. The only thing I need to do is remind them that they need to check the door. The television will stay off in our home until everything that CAN be done IS done.

Ultimately, I'll work up to having one boy a night help me with dinner and soon, Josh will be responsible for doing his own laundry. :) I think it's important for them to know that it takes work to make a house run.

What do you do to train your children...?


1 comment:

Amooretto said...

NAG!


Muahaha...when you get the link..shoot it my way. the kids have chores and right now trying to sell the house it's "speedy clean up!" It's so neat to see the girls run like mad trying to pick up everything before we go anywhere in case we have 'someone' stop to look at the house.