Habits, sigh..

I second chorepacks.

Ideas of chores for those ages: (outside of personal hygiene like getting dressed, brushing teeth and hair, and cleaning bedroom)

5yo

pick up things off floor and put away

load and empty dishwasher, with help until trained (we moved all dishes to under the counter cabinets to make this doable by even younger ages!)

unload dryer, sort clothes into piles for people, fold towels/washcloths

put away her own clothes, deliver others’ pile of clothes to their bed.

sweep a small area with a hand vacuum – best investment ever!

set table

make bed

dust

empty bathroom trash

feed and water pets

wipe down bathroom sink/counter

chef’s helper for one meal of the day

wipe table, chairs with wet rag

The older child can do all of that plus things that require more reach/coordination like:

washing laundry, drying laundry

sweeping with broom, mop

vacuum

wipe counters in kitchen

make breakfast alone or with mom’s oversight

The key is to train them in how to do the job for a few weeks first. Show, show show, then help help help, then watch watch watch. Then turn them loose and inspect. I also accept different levels of “done” for different ages on neatness jobs. For example, my almost 3 year old’s bed is nnot as neat as the 7 and 10 year olds. His goal is to stretch blankets over the pillow.

Cindie,

I used this site to make my own chore charts for my children. Even though they were made for preschool children…my kids are very visual and these really work well for them.

Here is a link:http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2010/08/preschool-chore-charts.html

Habit training is so hard! I can totally sympathize! I know that I still need help with my own habits and when I think about how I may be influencing my children it is scary sometimes.

I’ll give you an idea of what we do, but keep in mind that it does not always get done like I would like for it to be done…

On a normal school day we get up, eat breakfast, and the kids go to the fridge to check out their chore charts. I started with simple things like: get dressed, clean bedroom, feed pets, brush teeth (I’m not sure how old they have to be before I do not have to remind them to brush their teeth…I am seriously beginning to wonder.) 

I do a few things while they get their morning chores done and then we start lessons. After lessons, they have 2 afternoon chores (put away their clean laundry and make a clean sweep throught the house picking up anything that belongs to them and putting it away) and 3 “paid chores” to do. I’m a little sneeky with the paid chores because I look around at the last minute to see what needs doing in the house and then stick those chores on the charts 🙂

They get paid for doing things like: cleaning the bathroom sinks and mirrors, taking out all the trash in the house, sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, etc. We give them $0.25 a day for paid chores. They are required to do their morning and afternoon chores…if they choose not to do their paid chores then the natural consequence is that they do not get paid 🙂

Hope this is helpful….

I’m SO glad others wonder if their kids will ever remember to brush their teeth on their own:) 

My kids are 9 and 12…so take that into consideration. I need simple, so we basically do all weekly household chores on Sat. mornings.  They do almost everything except my kitchen/foyer sweeping/mopping. I enjoy not having to worry about dusting, vacuuming, bathrooms, etc. during the school week.

For daily stuff, I just put it on their school list: dog duties, bed made, teeth brushed in the morning.  They know to put their dishes away after every meal.  Then also on their school list is that the school room table/bedroom floor/family room need to be picked up before any screen time.  They put clothes away as asked…and that pretty much takes care of most of our main needs.  If something like raking, cleaning baseboards, etc. needs to be done we pay them for that. The rest is just expected as family responsibility. We do give allowance.  HTH some:)  Gina

Well, the baseboards don’t get done as often as they should…just an example of what we pay for:)  Last time my hubby got so fed up he cleaned them himself when ds didn’t want the $$ bad enough!  We’re works in progress:)