Toddler Chores

Shake'n'Bake loves to help.

Some days, (more often than not,) this requires a bit of coercing.

O_o


After watching Shake'n'Bake's eagerness to help clean the house (which is in a constant state of dissarray) I decided to cash in on this and designate specific jobs just for her.

Awesome.

Enter: The Job Charts

What started out as one chart for the bathroom, quickly spread to her bedroom, and then the living room. (That is all of the rooms in my house. But dysfunction, what about the kitchen? Or your bedroom? All the same rooms. My bedroom and the girls' bedroom... divided by a curtain. Kitchen, dining room, living room, front hall? One room. And the bathroom.)

This is the bathroom job chart:

We each drew one picture representation of the job that needed to be done. That way, Shake'n'Bake felt included in making the charts, and she was more likely to do the jobs shown.

Put laundry in the laundry basket.

Put recycling in the recycling box.

Put diapers in the diaper bag.

This job chart was the first one that we created. It gave me the freedom to say: "Have you done your bathroom jobs?" and expect that she would then go and do them.

Then I let it get to my head.

Bedroom Jobs:

Created in the hopes that she would be equally as inspired to clean her bedroom... not really.

Make bed.

Put toys in baskets.

Put letter mats away.

Put stuffed animals in wagon.

The jobs from the bedroom were either too difficult or too time consuming, because she was not interested in doing any of them.

I still pushed through, and attempted to make  job chart for the living room.

 Tah dah!

Put colouring supplies back in desk.

Put shoes into shoe stand.

Put toys into basket.

Put books in bookshelf.

The jobs have now been removed from the 'job charts' and are now clothespinned to a line on the wall. That way, I can display the jobs that need to be done, and not all of them.

She's still not overly interested in them anymore, but she will clean (with grumbling) when I ask her to, and she's always excited to clean up everything for some allowance.

Nothing quite like the temptation of a quarter, dime, or nickle for her homemade piggy bank.