The New Year is a great time to get {re}organized and get back on track with menu plans, goals sheets and a chore chart for the kids. After holiday crazies, I always start cleaning out my pantry, my junk drawers and of course, all the storage areas from which Christmas decorations were extracted and need to return.
Sure, there's the old paper and pen but there are also some great kids' charts online that take the guesswork out of creating clever engaging ones. For example, I was asked to look over GoalForIt.com and tell you what I think.
After signing up for free, you will see charts for kids and then charts for tweens and teens. I have young teens and so I checked out that one. I need all the help I can get and so do they! They are actually embracing more organization but many days I struggle with keeping them on task because I am busy and don't want to spend my time yelling at them. I am hoping having a chart to reference may actually help.
Picking the age appropriate chart.
{I tried to watch the video describing the charts but my husband recently clamped down on Internet security for the kids which alternately makes me happy but frustrates me because for some reason this domain where the video is stored is blocked tonight and he is not here to unblock it for me. ACK!}
So, first (after signing in and selecting the teen chart option), I had to pick the color of my chart.
Picking My Chore Chart Color
Then, came time to add chores. Now, this was fun. I tried to be realistic. Certain tasks are expected of my kids and other tasks are offered occasionally for spending money.
Picking Chores
Some of the options like "nuture faith" and "family time" seem like more of a message to the parents than to the kids but since ideally parents and teens will go over this together, that is probably okay. Duh, I just realized that the pre-created tiles are probably the same for all age goal and chore charts for all ages. A quick glance reveals that teen options are the same as the adult goal chart but kids under 13 get their own cute labels. You can also set up rewards if certain chores or goals are met.
After adding a few pre-created options and then creating my own dog-walking tile, I got a little overwhelmed at the thought of tracking all of this, despite the fact that this is supposed to help get the kids involved and that this is all stuff we do anyway. Or, maybe I am just overwhelmed at deciding what I want from my kids tonight. I may have to come back to this.
Overall, I see this more usable to parents as a smartphone app which I BET is in the works (so you can think about it and work on it throughout the day). I do like that the kids' charts are printable. Great potential here.
{Disclosure: This is a sponsored post in conjunction with GoalForIt and Mom Select. All thoughts and opinions are my own.}
