0:29 - The idea of keeping a clean space
1:06 - The chore sheet
1:55 - Small rewards other then money
2:44 - As they get older
Hi, folks. My name is Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger, and you are watching Saturdays with Harper. Now last week, if you tuned in, we discussed why pets are beneficial to children, and we did touch a little bit on the subject of responsibility. So this week I'd like to delve further into that category of responsibility and discuss when and why it's beneficial for children to have chores.
Now from a very, very early age we can actually start creating and instilling the idea that we want to keep a clean space. We want our home, we want our work area to be clean. I don't know if you guys out there have heard of the Clean Up Song, but it's a very popular song that was shown on a TV show a long time ago. I actually used this with my daughter when she was of the young preschool age, just to teach them that cleaning up can be fun. You can make it sort of a game, and then in the end you're rewarded with a beautifully clean room or work space or play space to use again the next time you decide you want to play.
Now as they get a little bit older, maybe we want to start to highlight the area of chores. I've actually created a very brief chore sheet. Now, the one that my daughter uses is much bigger. We keep it out in the living room and we use stickers. We put stickers all over it as she completes the chores. Now, your basic chore sheet is going to look something like this. It's going to discuss the days of the week, which can also be beneficial to your child, as they're learning the days of the week. Then it's going to discuss different things for them to do each day. It could be things like feeding the dog, making their bed, cleaning their room, sweeping, if they are a little bit older. They do need to be appropriate tasks for their age, but as they get older you can definitely assign more challenging tasks for them.
Now, my daughter is five years old right now, so she is not quite understanding or really a big fan of money. I know that a lot of parents do give a dollar or two per chore that is achieved by the child. Well, at a younger age, maybe we want to reward them with an outing, something that they like to do. Maybe at the end of the week, if they have completed all of their chores they get to out for ice cream or they get to go to the beach. Now, they also do need to understand, though, that the reward itself is being able to be responsible for your things, being able to take care of your things like your pets and your laundry and your room, to keep a nice room. We want to make sure that at the same time we do offer them a small reward, we are also instilling that the idea of this is responsibility. This is going to make it so much easier for them in the future when they're adults.
As they get older you can assign, if you'd like, their chores to be rewarded by some sort of monetary value, whether it's $0.50 for a chore or a couple dollars for a chore. Let's not go too extravagant, because we do want them to understand that they have to work for what they're going to make, but in the later years applying some money to it can also help them understand how to save their money. You can start explaining how the money that they make is money that they need to save. Maybe they can spend a little, but they need to save a lot. These are all different things that we can start to get into when our children are older. But keeping a chore list and starting at a very young age just from picking up toys and then working towards harder tasks as they're older, like vacuuming or dusting, will definitely be beneficial to your child in their later years and in adulthood. So let's definitely try to go ahead and do that.
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