 Hi friends, we have found a way to bring our five-year-old into the family fold of chores in a way that she's actually really excited about and is happy and joyful and I wanted to share that with you today. Six months ago or so my oldest daughter started talking to me about a sticker chart. Now they had done this in preschool but I don't think she was really tuned in too much to it. She wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention but then she kind of started talking about wanting to do a sticker chart and I thought okay you know because she's getting to the age where I feel like she can start participating more with chores. She's always helped. She's always been really sweet to offer help and I have tried my very best to put my type A over there and let her help me fold the laundry but she's always wanted to be a helper and everything which is great but we didn't have a chore chart. We didn't really have anything set up like that but then she had mentioned it a few times and then she started kindergarten. Now I don't know if it's the norm for kindergarten I would assume it is but they've got you know they get stickers for behavior or for homework or for pretty much anything that's positive they get the reward of a sticker which usually equals something bigger at the end of the week or the month or whatever. So as soon as she started kindergarten she started asking more about having this sticker chart and I thought okay now maybe now is the time to do this. So we got on Amazon and found this chore chart there was actually quite a few of them which I'll talk about here in a minute but we got the we got this chart and I started writing the chores on there and it has become this thing where she's joyful to do her stuff and a lot of this stuff she does now without me even needing to ask. So that was kind of the progression of how this happened and it was kind of actually her idea which is awesome I'm proud of her for telling me knowing you know what what gives her incentive and what makes her happy and what makes her tick. Naturally I mean to Amazon first I did actually look around a little bit here and I considered making my own but I wanted something that I was going to be able to like a dry erase because I mean you know if I make my own then I'm going to continue making them and all that. So I wanted something that was like that was reusable for sure. So I went to Amazon and I just put in chore chart and boom there was just a bunch of different options and I'll talk about this one first the one that we have here the reason the main reason I went with it with two reasons. One is its magnetic and it sticks nicely to the fridge and two is it's you use a like it's a chalk marker like a dry erase type chalk marker and so at the end of the week we're able to erase all the stars and start all over and if I feel like adding a new chart a new chore in or taking one out it's easily done. So those were two of the bigger ones because I wanted to be able to specify the chores because this is going to be a living document it's going to change over time and we also have a baby and so that eventually she'll probably use it when she gets to be a little bit older and responds to stickers or stars in this case. So but there were actually there were quite a few and I narrowed it down I really liked this one. I also really liked this one as well and then finally this was also in the runnings but ultimately I ended up going with this one I like the way it looks it kind of reminds me of school I guess I don't know anyway I this is the one we ended up going with and we've been really happy with it so far. My next plan is to get like a six pack of different colors so we can you know add in pinks and greens and stuff like that because she likes bright colors. So that's that's my next step but obviously as you can see the one color works just fine. When it came time to figure out what we wanted on the tour chart that was actually maybe a little more difficult than I thought I did go to Pinterest quite a bit and I googled that as well because she's five and she's definitely able to do quite a bit but I also wanted to make sure that I'm giving her chores that she could do that I'm not having to come along behind her and do behind her because I mean I want her to be room for me to train her and to show her how to do things but we also want to start with something she's that I know she's going to be successful at and as she gets older you know we'll start to build on that like vacuuming she'll we'll get there but it'll be a process and so this was kind of the first this was our first draft we picked things that we knew that she would be able to accomplish throughout the day because we wanted her we wanted to build this momentum and build her confidence and get her excited in it as she's seeing things get checked off and she's getting her stars so for our five year old we started with a daily routine that we wanted her to follow and then we have extras now on this daily routine we have get dressed make bed help with your sister keep your room clean take a bath eat all your meals and then help with dishes so those are things that we we want her to do on a daily basis now it is my goal that eventually we will not even really have these up here because I kind of of the opinion that there are things that she will do just like when I was a kid there are things that that she'll do in this house that she's not going to get paid for it's just an expectation of living here and it's an expectation of our family like making her bed I'm not always going to pay her to make her bed because she she needs to know to do that on her own that's just being a good steward and and a good citizen of the home at some point in time that will be an expectation and eating all your meals I mean come on now oh she's she's a good eater so I don't need to reward her for that but as I said she's still young and we want her to we want to train her that where she understands that there are chores and there's rewards that you can get you know we've got stars and stars equal a little bit of money at the end of the month so like I said a little earlier this is definitely a living document and as she gets older this list will change and things like getting dressed and making your bed are not going to be a part of it that's just going to be acted from her and then for extras we have take out the recycle clean the living room help clean the garage with daddy help with the laundry or fully set the table so those are things that they're not happening every day and in the middle of the week we're busy with school and stuff like that it may or may not happen and if it does great and if it doesn't it's okay it's just these are extra things and we also want her to know that there will be things on down the line outside of her the normal things we expect from her that she can work to make money like if dad doesn't want to pressure wash the driveway when she gets older well I'll pay you a couple bucks to do it because that's outside of sort of the normal being a good steward of the home type thing so those are the extras now as far as money and what she gets for all this uh Steve and I actually kind of we got the list made before we figured out what what we were going to give her at the end of the week and so we thought we kind of scrambled a little bit and thought ah what are we going to do so because these daily things are eventually going to be things that we kind of just expect her to do we didn't want it to be we wanted to focus more on the extras we wanted her to understand she's going to get more money for doing these extras than she will for the the daily things so if she gets a star all seven days of the week she gets a nickel for each row um and for the extras she gets a quarter each the other part of that is we are we know that it's not like all of a sudden she's going to start doing every single one of those every single day it's just we don't a we don't have time and b she's not quite old enough yet now when she starts to connect dots we might have to change this up a little bit but for now it works that well because when she does an extra she's really proud of herself because she knows that that was something that helps that really helps mommy and daddy and that makes her proud for now we will pay her for these daily things but long term we will um start to change the way this this looks and what we're going to require of her and the chores that she'll be needing to do as we started this process she was really excited probably more excited actually than I realized and there was there was one day where she helped me with her baby sister actually really was very helpful and more so than I was anticipating and so she got two stars and she was really excited like very joyful and that encouraged her to want to do more and then she's asking can I do this can I help and you know so this it was good the momentum was really good so she got two stars for that day well um which which was awesome but then there was a day where she had gotten her star and I don't remember which one it was for I think it was helping with her sister and she had already gotten her star but then as sometimes it tends to happen around dinner time there's the sort of the meltdown and the crazy pills starts to come out and she ended up getting a star removed um because there was some stuff happening with her sister and um she wasn't listening and so we ended up I thought you know I'm gonna see what happens I'm gonna I'm going to tell her I'm taking a star away and I did and um you you would have thought that she that I had I don't know like whooped her with a board or I said I don't even know she was a very very upset and she wanted to know how she could get the star back and so I thought oh I have accidentally stumbled upon another way to help with discipline it um and help her kind of understand consequences of her actions and I can use this which is great we actually did not too long ago we did a video on punishment versus discipline so this has been something that's been really fresh in my mind and so when I took the star away and she freaked out uh it changed her behavior and so it wasn't intended but I thought okay this is something that I can utilize to help with discipline if necessary I'm excited about where we're gonna go with it and what it's helping helping teach our daughter and I'm excited for the future because eventually I'm gonna be able to start giving her some of my stuff that can be part of her chores because honestly I feel like it's important for kids and I would be doing this if I had two boys it doesn't it's not girls it's not boys it's children in general they need to have a sense of responsibility within the home it's important because I want my kids to be able to have a clean home and understand that there are things that have to be done nobody likes cleaning the toilets I don't but it needs to be done and when you have your own home or if you rent your own apartment it needs to be done and so these are things that we're sowing for now but we're going to reap later they will reap later and so it's I'm excited about the where this is gonna lead and what it's gonna need for them so that's it um I hope you guys like the video if you do please click like if you feel like anybody that you know might enjoy this video also please share it with them I love that that'd be great we would also love it if you want it to be a subscriber that way you'll get notification when we post new videos which is incidentally every week um and we've got a bunch of videos about family and kids and discipline and tour charts and food for babies and childbirth we've got oh we've got a whole bunch of videos basically just kind of walking along this 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