personalized picture chore chart

Way back when we only had one child and we thought our lives were so chaotic (shyah, if we only knew how much more chaotic our lives would be with 4 children!) I came up with a picture chore chart to help my Darling Dawdler. He knew what he needed to do, and would make the effort to listen, but somehow along the way he gets distracted. Hubby and I resorted to using a kitchen timer. It worked because he always wanted to beat the clock, but the problem was we only had one timer and it was downstairs in the kitchen.

I searched the internet for ideas and eventually came up with a picture chore chart. Darling Dawdler was only 3 years old and couldn't read yet, but he was great at recognizing pictures. I came up with a list of things I wanted him to do which was very basic: getting dressed, eating, brushing teeth, cleaning up. I took pictures of him doing all of the things in my list and laminated them (I used self-laminating ID protectors) and labeled each one. Then I bought a white poster board and covered it with self-adhesive laminating sheet. I also bought velcro dots (rough part on the board, smooth part on the pictures).  I divided the board into 3 sections for morning, noon and night. The pictures were kept in a little zip lock bag on the left. In the morning as soon as he did each one, he searched for the corresponding picture and velcroed it to the board. At the end of the day when he had done all his tasks, he received a special sticker. To prevent him from putting the stickers all over the wall, I used the left over poster board and designated it as his Reward Board. Using 3M command adhesive (the velcro kind) I mounted the board in the landing of our stairwell, and the Reward Board in my son's room. 

This kind of chore chart would be appropriate for young children and the rewards can be modified to suit the child's interest/motivation.