The Job Jar

The girls riding around in the cul-du-sac...a favorite Summer past time.

The other week the girls helped create a Job Jar consisting of various simple jobs that they can do on their OWN (very important part of it).  Jobs such as, vacuuming, cleaning windows, dusting, folding laundry, sweeping the porch, etc.  Each morning they pick a job from the jar and it is their responsibility to have it (as well their journal and workbook) done by noon.  They earn one sticker for the job and another sticker for getting workbook/journal done...they can earn stickers for other various things as well (playing nice with each other, extra jobs, etc.)  I think there's around 30 spaces on their sticker chart to fill, and every chart is worth $5.00!  Both girls are always ready to spend the $5.00 immediately as soon as they fill a chart.  They are finally grasping the idea of saving the charts up to have more money to play around with.  By the way...I came up with this system (it works for us) from piecing together the ideas from Power of Moms.

Anyway, I often wonder if the jobs are actually helping me...as they can sometimes lead to disaster.  Like when Haley had "Pull weeds in the garden."...she accidentally pulled the new baby corn.  She felt so bad.  Needless to say I was pretty upset, as the corn and pumpkins are the only things coming up!  Now, we just have pumpkins. She has since replanted and we'll see what we get. Or when Morgan used half a bottle of Windex for one mirror.  Grumble, grumble.  Or when Haley was spraying Pledge inside my kitchen drawers to "dust" them.  I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Well, you told me to dust all flat wood surfaces...so this is wood, and it's flat."  Okay...I did say that, so she has point. 

Bottom line...this is a learning experience for us all!  I am super proud of them though because they are complaining very little (right now) about doing them.  In fact, they are pretty excited to see what they get each morning.  And they do enjoy helping with "grown-up" type chores.  Anything other than cleaning their room, or cleaning the playroom they are usually more willing to do!

I know I still need to update on swim lessons (they better know how to swim at the end of this month with the amount of money I putting into this!).  

Solid foods for Rory: She's eating like a champ!  Too bad she doesn't sleep as well as she eats!

Potty training: I'm hitting it hard...Piper and I do not leave the house.  She's doing pretty good, but the process is exhausting me! I will succeed though...I will!!