Summer Jobs

When I was young, I remember the STAR CHART making an appearance every summer to track our jobs and earn prizes. It was always very motivating for me. As a parent, attempting to teach MY kids to work, we've tried several things. I did a post last year (at the end of the summer) about this (Whistle While You Work), documenting our "white board" job chart, and reviewing some of the previous projects.

For 2011 ... once again, we are trying something new. I really do think novelty often adds to the success of something working with kids (especially MY kids). While reading the newspaper, I noticed an article about an online job chart ... as we are a very tech family, I thought the kids might enjoy this. It was pretty easy to set up and personalize. I'm keeping the "points" values pretty low (just one point for most "jobs" ... and some of the things they can get points for really can't be considered a "job", but hey ...). The kids can earn 10+ points a day without too much effort. They can redeem points for prizes (a candy bar, pack of basketball cards, small toy ... or for Landon, a late night out with friends).

As our summer just started, we've only been implementing this program for about a week, but so far so good. As usual, Cooper is the most invested. He really likes rules and structure and routine, in fact he can get a little obsessive about it. Callahan had been the sole child to continue on with our "old" program, keeping track of his jobs and collecting a small paycheck each week ... the points in this program don't have quite the monetary potential he was used too, so he's not totally thrilled with the new system.

... we'll see how it goes ... gotta go make some updates to the job lists now ...