Chores Galore

For years our family has struggled to find a good method for training the kids in the basics. Countless ideas have been tried and have either quickly or slowly fallen apart. My sister is a crazed fan of Melissa and Doug, so when there is a display of their toys I always check to see if there is something she'd like. Barnes and Noble has started carrying them, so I looked it over and found a magnetic chore chart. Being me, I set it aside and thought about it for three or four weeks. Burned by other systems, I bought one and let Kurt look it over. He liked it, so I let the sample sit for another three or four weeks while I thought about it some more. In the end, Amazon had the best price and I bought one for everybody.
The kids love it. We love it, and best of all things are going better. The feature I was least enthusiastic about--the white board--has become one of it's best assets allowing us to penalize negative behavior and the kids an opportunity to express themselves. Since we bought six boards there are enough disks for each child to have their favorite color, which allows us to use the currently unused disks to reward random acts of goodness and full completion of all required tasks.
Discipline is now much more uniform. It's negative one for disobedience; negative two for physical violence; and negative three for protracted disobedience aka laziness. Everybody knows the deal. Kurt's natural flair for statistics has turned what was a bogged down emotional conflict into a simple set of numbers earning rewards and punishments in a very even-handed way.
Things I like about the board. The magnets dress things up and are more permanent that stickers or check-off write and wipe boards. The white board as I've described above, and it is easy to keep clean and organized. The list of chores includes things my older children do as well as simple jobs for the little ones. There are blank tags for adding your own chores. The price is good value for money. It's available at Amazon, Here.