I was at my brother's house and saw a nifty chore chart he had. There was a row for each child, magnets for each chore, and five columns: jobs to do, assigned to you, finished, approved, and needs help. Most of the jobs start out in the first column, which is owned by everyone, and then either the child picks a certain number of chores or they get assigned out. As soon as the job belongs to a child, they move the magnet to that second column.
As the child finished a job, she moves that chore magnet to the "finished" column, and the parent checks it off and moves it to the "approved" column, When I asked him about the "help" column, he explained that it was for jobs that the child could ordinarily do independently, but something unusual is preventing its completion, like the lawn mower ran out of gas. I think he got this from his job - or maybe he made it up. I dunno which, but my brother is crazy organized like that.
I loved it, and determined to make my own. Since I didn't have magnets, I started out with jobs scrawled on sticky notes and stuck on the fridge. That's the largest smooth space we have, since all the walls are coated with that extra-lumpy orange peel texturing. I grabbed some random washi tape from my one-day-I'll-do-something-cute stash, and marked off a grid - older kids on the freezer and younger kids on the fridge. The sticky notes soon lost their sticky, and I held them on the fridge with magnets. It worked fairly well, but looked a mess.
The chore chart's next incarnation happened when I found some clear glass stones and decided to do a little craft project. I chose pretty paper in different colors to differentiate between daily, weekly, and periodic chores. I cut them down , wrote the name of the chore in a nice font, and glued them to the backs of the stones with clear-drying glue. As soon as they were completely dry, sanded the edges of the paper to make it smooth and hot-glued on a magnet. Tada! What a great crafter I am!
For two whole days, the fridge was a happy thing to behold. All the chores were on cute little magnets, all organized in their slightly less-than-level grids. I even thought about fixing the lines. I told the kids we were going to make a new, concerted effort to get the chores done. Anyone with all daily chores in the "approved" column would get dinner. Hooray for incentives!
It was a little bit hard to read the chores through the rounded glass, but no matter. We could get close and peer at them. The colors I so carefully chose didn't show up well, either, but cute trumps practicality! Yes!
And then on the third day, I realized that our magnets were stronger than the glue that held the paper to the glass stone. When the kids tried to move a chore (or more often, playing with them), the glass came off but the magnet stayed stuck to the fridge. I glued several back on before I gave up. There is now a small pile of glass stones with lovely paper - but no magnet, or magnets glued securely to naked paper - sitting the next to the refrigerator. The pile is growing each day.
And now that I think about it, at no time during all this lovely crafting, have the chores actually gotten done any better. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
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