MORNING JARS

I was recently reading an article in Family Fun magazine, which I don’t currently subscribe to, but hope to someday, about how to make chores more fun and less of a battle. One of their ideas was to give each child their own jar. Every day, mom writes on strips of paper different tasks to be done. Then the child picks one strip at a time, goes and does that, then comes back for another strip. The neat thing is, they don’t all have chores on them. I got really excited when I started to think about all that could be incorporated in this activity. For example, some papers will be fun tasks, like "Choose 1 piece of candy" or "Give mom a hug". In reality, there may only be 2-3 chores actually in the jar per day, but they are learning to do them, and at the same time, they are having fun! Here were some of my thoughts, and feel free to submit any more ideas that you may have to add. I tried this today for the first time, and my kids loved it, and accomplished everything in their jars. My only fear is that unless I have new ideas all the time, this may get old. I’m hoping not, but we’ll cross that bridge if it comes. Here were some of my ideas:

CHORES:
 Get dressed
 Brush teeth
 Make bed
 Feed dogs
 Unload dishwasher (or just the silverware, which is Joel’s job!)
 Dust living room
 Wipe down bathroom counter
 Fold a basket full of towels and put away
 Etc.

FUN IDEAS:
 Enjoy 1 piece of candy from the candy jar
 Give Mom a hug
 Give your sibling a high five
 Do a summersault!
 Do 5 jumping jacks
 I need more of these!!!

ACADEMIC:
 Set timer for 5 minutes and review flashcards
 Write/draw a journal entry
 Look at 3 pictures, write the word for what each one is and color them
 The ideas here are endless and could go right along with whatever they’re learning at the time as a way to review before starting the day.

The key to this is to thoroughly explain each strip ahead of time so they know exactly what is expected of them before they do it. The fun thing is everyday the strips can be different and you can add more as time goes on. My goal is to teach them how to do household tasks without them complaining, and also to make it fun. Each jar can be specially made for each child’s ability, but you can also make a race out of it, with inspection time to follow of course! One last thought is to be sure to explain what the strips say ahead of time and even put pictures on them so they understand what the task is without needing to be able to read it. Oh yeah, and crank up the music! It gets everyone's blood flowing a bit faster and keeps things light! :)