Mama is going to town today. (Everyone in the house hates going to town but this is a necessary evil that must occur periodically.) There is clean laundry that needs to be folded, slops to be put on the compost pile, more laundry to wash & dry, dishes to wash & dry and garden work to be done. How are 10 (almost 11) and 12 yr old boys going to be motivated to accomplish these things while Mama is in town?
When I returned from my trip to town six hours later, the work was done and the boys were playing in the dirt. (They have a spot under a certain tree where they drive their cars and other matchbox toys, building roads and etc.)
Before leaving I detailed each son's work list, like so-
Melvin
Wash dishes (30 minutes)
Dump slop (10 min)
Fold laundry (1 hr)
Pull weeds from a garden bed $1
Christopher
Dry dishes (30 min)
Wash & dry a load of laundry (10 min)
Fold laundry (1 hr)
Pull weeds from a garden bed $1
"Fold laundry" included hanging up clean shirts and putting them in closets.
Here's the deal- If the job gets done in the amount of time listed in the parentheses, the child receives that amount of money. Thirty minutes = thirty cents. If the job is accomplished in half the time, the child will get double the money. Time listed is thirty minutes + job is done in 15 minutes or less = sixty cents. This method worked well for their older brothers. House cleaning got done lickety-split when I detailed it this way. So I pulled it out of the archives and revisited it today. Ta-da! It still works.
The garden bed had its own reward beings it was a big job in the heat of the day.
Here's the tally they kept-
Prayer meeting/Bible study was cancelled this evening due to a power outage at the church house. So we had a nice free evening to relax and ....blog.
 |
| We have new critters around here. This one was ripping around near me while I typed. I managed to get a photo before he tore off in another direction. Most of the time the pose was lost by the time the camera "clicked". See below. |
No comments:
Post a Comment