Managers of Their Chores- Part 2

ChorePacks are going well, although, we only did them M-TH. Oops. Guess I'm not being too consistent, but we ended up going to my parents' on Friday instead of Thursday (and forgot the chorepacks) and then Saturday I was not feeling that great so I didn't feel like teaching and supervising new chores. I hope to do better next week. (:

Anyway...In the book Managers of Their Chores, the authors recommend using a clip on plastic holder, like the ones you use for name tags, to hold the chore cards. The kit that comes with the book has 4 of these holders plus a plastic page with pockets to hold the extra chorepack cards. The book I bought did not come with the kit so I got my plastic holders at Walmart. They were $2.44 for 12. I also got some ID card reels ($1.88 for 3) that clip on. We also checked out office supply stores like Staples and they had some other options like a pouch with a string attached so they can wear it around their neck. To make the chorepack, I just attached the reel to the plastic holder, inserted one set of chore cards in each holder and VOILA! I put each set of cards in an extra holder and then change them out for each chore time. Here's a picture of all the chorepacks. The blue cards are Zach's daily morning chores, the pink ones are Katelyn's. The green cards are daily afternoon chores and the yellow ones are Saturday chores. Each card has the number of the chore, the name of the chore, the child's name and which chorepack it is (morning/afternoon/Saturday).
I used a template that Chris had to make business cards with to make each chore card. If you go to Avery.com (the label company), they have templates you can download. After I typed out all the information, I printed them on colored cardstock. Then I cut them out and put them in the holders. Each card is 3 1/4" by 2". They fit in the holders nicely and there is enough room for more cards when we add more chores. Of course, how thick your paper is determines how many cards will fit in the holder, and having them a bit smaller than the holder gives it a bit of room so the kids can easily flip the cards. One more tip: Type out all the morning cards together, afternoon cards together, etc on the same page so that they are all the same color when you print them. I didn't do this and had to print out each page two times in different colors because I had some morning and some afternoon on the same page.

The kids were very excited to wear their chorepacks. They also got a kick out of flipping the cards after they completed a chore. Of course it became a race- "I am on card 3!" "Yeah, well, I am on card 4!" Sigh. I guess healthy competition can't hurt. I did keep them motivated! (:
Here's Katelyn putting away dishes (she only had to dry them, but wanted to put them away too- what a sweetie). You can see her chorepack attached to the top of her shirt, er, um, bathing suit? (you never know what she will end up wearing on any given day). Zach prefers to clip it to his shorts. (:
And Zach feeling like a big boy "Swiffering" the kitchen floor:
So that is our system! I hope it continues to work as well as it did last week. Tomorrow is a new day! We will see!