No-Fail Summer Job Charts

This is one of my favorite Summer things. I LOVE structure in the Summer and our motto every Summer is “Work Hard, Play Hard.” I believe it’s so important to work hard and play hard so families can really live life to the fullest. One without the other just won’t work and will result in less happiness for all members of the family. I print these out and put them on a mini clipboard for each child.

So here is the description of the chart:

• Name:  (self explanatory)
• Personal jobs:  (self explanatory)  I love to check things off lists so I like to include some of the obvious things.
• Learning:  This is just me, but I think kids are much happier when they continue to learn through the Summer. There are statistics that give a percentage of information that the kids lose during Summer and I think it’s important to keep those neurons firing even if it’s in simple ways. We buy the Sylvan learning books from Costco and you can also find them on Amazon. The book coordinate with the grade levels. I buy the book that coordinates with the grade level they will be in at the end of the Summer. I usually buy the Math and Language Arts books for each child and have them do one page (front and back) out of each one. This works really well and gives me a chance to explain simple concepts they will be learning in the next grade level.
• Family job:  I pick a job for the day that I need done and they fill it in the blank. There are a myriad of ways you could do this, but for us, we will be putting all the jobs on popsicle sticks and picking them out this Summer. In the past, I have just filled them in based on needs.
• Good attitude:  I give my kids a 1-5 rating based on their attitude. This is great because I want my kids to not only work hard, but learn to have a good attitude. These are some of the thing you will hear me say to my kiddos in a happy and positive voice:
  • “One day you are going to provide for your family and I love you so much that i’m going to teach you know how to do that.”
  • “I know you can do this, it’s so important to work and you can make it fun.”
  • “You get to decide how fun it’s going to be.”
  • “Let’s do it quick and go swimming when we are done.”
• POINT SYSTEM:  There are so many ways you can do this but we give a couple points for each job that can total 15 points. Five of those points are attitude points. I don’t necessarily agree with paying for jobs since kids naturally need to help with the upkeep of the home, I DO want my kids to learn how to deal with money so I pay them a little TINY bit. They can earn $3.50 by the end of the week if they are doing everything. My kids are 10 and under and this works well for them. We pay weekly at Family Night on Mondays. We also help them split up their money on the spot (which will be another post.)  In short, we have them do 20% for savings %10 tithing, 10% other giving, %60 in their wallet to spend as they choose. It works really well for us. By paying them it gives them a little money, but only about $.15 per job so they still know that their responsibility is to participate in upkeep of the home because they are a member of the home.

This is all, if you have any questions leave them under the comments. Once again, structure for Summer is SOOOOOO important, and this works wonders for us. You can also check out my kids iphone application called KID CHATTEROO. We all want to capture funny things our kiddos say and creates moments with our kids that give us as parents, a little peek into what they are thinking.  KID CHATTEROO allows you to ask your kiddos questions and it records those cute things they say and you can share them via email, text, etc.

DOWNLOAD JOB CHART HERE

HAPPY SUMMER,

xoxo,

KIRSTEN