Simple Chore Chart
We recently acquired two large jars full of pennies, nickels and dimes from the kids’ grandparents. They knew how much “Pickles” loves coins and knew both boys had piggy banks at home that were waiting to be fed.
We decided to use this opportunity to incorporate chores back into “Pickles” schedules. He’s four and he likes to help but we often get caught up in the flurry of getting stuff done and forget to incorporate him. We also wanted him to start understanding, at some level, that a penny is less than a nickel and a dime is more than a penny, etc. So, we built out a simple chore chart and shared the plan with him. He’d earn either a penny, a nickel or a dime for different tasks:
Typically, for most of the chores he is simply helping us in the process. He isn’t old enough to go get the mail himself yet, nor is he strong enough to push a full trash barrel to the curb or lift a trash bag from the kitchen trash bin – but he can come with me to get the mail, or gather all the trash from the other trash bins in the house and dump them into the kitchen trash bin and get me a new trash bag. Depending on the level of his involvement in the chore we assigned a value.
This experience has been good thus far. He is wanting to help more to earn coins that he can put into his piggy bank and we are remembering to slow down a bit and include him in chores. Sometimes for fun we will pay him in all pennies just to see how big his eyes are about how many coins he has and we’ll regularly give “Bacon” some coins too for his piggy bank just because he’s too cute when he comes over looking for coins.
We look forward to the day when he has enough where we can roll the coins with him and bring him to the bank to cash them in, then he can decide what he wants to spend his money on!
pickles and bacon 