Chore Tracker

My six year old is in a phase where he asks for lots of items. It's frustrating but many of them are recurring things he gets really obsessed with. Luckily he never got into the craze of watching people open toys on YouTube but instead he watches people build Lego sets. That leads to lots of "I want a set like that," comments. His current love is an Angry Birds set coming out in the spring and it's not just a whim it's something he mentions every single day. In the past, I've always answered we could talk about it when it's Christmastime or your birthday. Now though he knows that's a long ways off and both occur with the 2 months of each other. We don't really buy items or toys throughout the year so we felt it might be time to give him a way to earn some things.

I'm also conflicted when it comes to allowances. Lots of things he needs to do because he's part of the family and we all work together. At the same time though, I want to slowly instill some work ethics and let him work towards a goal. I know if I were to say, "clean the playroom and you can earn $1" it wouldn't just magically happen. Nolan is an amazing help but works best when I have specific tasks I call him for throughout the day. I search Pinterest for ideas and asked friends how to convert this to a reward/chore system.

In the end, I came up with this chore punch card.

It's something we can keep downstairs in the kitchen where we usually work out of and when he's been helpful or asks to earn some money I can simply grab it and punch out a reward afterwards. Our goal is that he can earn a maximum of $5 per week. That means there are 20 punches each worth a quarter. Things he does now that are helpful include bringing down carious loads of laundry, taking out recycling, and cleaning up specific items as I point them out. He's earning just small amounts at a time so he doesn't get an inflated sense of what his efforts are worth and it's small enough that he doesn't have to work for long periods of time and get burnt out. We'll see how it goes and post back in a few weeks!!

Would you like to try out the chore punch card for yourself? It's available for download free here.  Four fit on each standard sheet of paper and I plan to print onto cardstock and laminate!