Children's Chore Charts Made Fun

Get ready for your life to change..

Would you like to teach your children responsibility, Yet teach them chores can be fun?

Watch your kids go from

To

TO

WATCH YOURSELF GO FROM

I learned about the “Skinner’s Box” in a psychology class. We had an upper-level psychology student

come to class and demonstrate how he had trained a pigeon to peck a button and be fed. I learned that random reinforcement is the most

effective way to control behavior in pigeons and in humans. It is similar

to gambling. If a pigeon is fed every time it pecks a button and you stop

the flow of feed it will cease pecking after about 16 attempts. If you reward the pigeon randomly like

one pellet after 4, 10, 16, 2, pecks, it will continue pecking the button an average of

430 times before it stops because of no rewards being dispensed. It is

similar to gambling because the gambler knows he will be rewarded, just not when.

I applied this to the chore chart by - first -having the kids create their

own charts.

This was drawn by our seven year old.It is his MORNING chart.

This was drawn by our preschooler.It is his MORNING chart.

I drew this for our 3-year old. Notice how there are no words because he cannot read yet.

Every time our kids do their charts, they receive one token. They can get one in the morning, and one at

night. After eight tokens, they get to spin the wheel.

I created a wheel-of-fortune type wheel that had numbers representing

different prizes. If they spin a

7, you pull prize #7 out of the…

(You can make your own by looking hereor using one from an old game)

They may receive anything from a simple quarter machine toy up to a $5 Lego set.

This transfers the gambling idea over because each time they spin they are

hoping for a better prize.

I explained this to my psychology teacher and he suggested I take it one step

further. He said in order to keep the wheel from becoming a negative thing the kids should be rewarded something after spinning the wheel so many times. We

chose three. This way, even if they have spun the wheel three times and received undesirable or smaller toys, they will be

rewarded with a certain toy that they can look forward to no matter what. In our case, it is usually Lego mini figures. This keeps them excited about spinning the

wheel and doing their chores regardless of what rewards they receive along the way.