Chore Wheel

I really like charts and lists.   And our chore time routine is always evolving so I want to share with you our latest incarnation. 

But first, as a reminder, here's where I talked about our previous routine. 

This is the check-list that I made and posted in the kitchen to help everyone remember what needed to be done.  I covered it in contact paper so we could use a dry-erase marker on it.

In that post and also in this one, I mentioned about the kids earning "media allowance."  I searched the blog and was surprised to discover that I had never given that concept a post of it's own.  So here's the short version: the kids earn time to watch movies or play video games (in half hour increments) by doing school work and chores.  We used to have envelopes tacked up to the bulletin board where they would keep their little paper movie bucks.  But now we just do tally marks.  This has been a great way to motivate them to do all kinds of things!

This sign is covered in contact paper like the checklist above.  But the dry-erase doesn't come off perfectly so it's looking pretty messy.  I'm going to have to come up with something else.  Maybe at least putting it in a sheet protector might be better. (And who's idea was it to use green marker on green paper?)

 So finally here's the new method we're going to try this school year.  Hubby had the idea of assigning each kid to their own room.  We're hoping this means the bathrooms will get cleaned more often!  We're also thinking that it will be easier to award media points to each child in a fair way according to how much work they do. 

Chore wheel!  It will get rotated one place every evening.
(Please excuse the giant black blobs in the place of my kids' names.  Privacy.)

The four rooms that we want cleaned up each night are the living room, school room, kitchen, and bathrooms.  Obviously the boys are too young to clean up by themselves so they've been assigned to be Mommy's and Daddy's assistants.

In each room I've hung lists of what needs to be done there.  I won't expect them to do every single thing on the lists every night, but the more things they do in a half-hour period, the more media points they earn.

 

We have two other wheels hanging up on our kitchen wall right now, too (I even made a prayer wheel for Nursery at church.)  A prayer wheel...

And a Family Home Evening wheel. 

This way, we don't have to worry about arguments of who's turn it is to pray ("I always get picked!  I don't want to do it again!"  "I never get a turn!")  The Family Home Evening Wheel is also helping us remember to actually do FHE each week.  The six assignments we rotate through are: conducting, opening song, opening prayer, lesson, closing song, and treat.  (Our Evening Prayer from the prayer wheel doubles as our closing prayer for FHE.)


Finally, here's how to make an easy wheel:

1. Cut out the center circle from one cheap paper plate.
2. Use that circle as your template to cut a circle from construction paper.
3. Find the center point on the construction paper and draw your lines to divide it into the correct number of sections.
4. Glue the construction paper to your paper plate circle.
5. Use a brass fastener to attach your circle to a second paper plate. (The concave part that you would eat off would face the wall.)
6. Tape pipe cleaner to the back of your wheel for a way to hang it up.