Chore Chart

I've been wanting to make a chore chart for my boys (they almost 4 and 5 1/2), but I didn't want a traditional "chart" style. I also wanted something that would look nice hung up in the house. I wanted it to be pretty and functional. I wasn't sure what I wanted until 2 weeks ago when my husband was doing a project and had a bunch of leftover pieces of cedar that were about 2 feet long. The following chore board sprung to mind:

 
First, I have to say, sometimes things come out as well or even better than you pictured in your mind (...and sometimes they don't). Happily, this is one of those times, I love how it turned out.

I took the bare 2 foot piece of wood and sanded it. Then I painted it with only 1 coat of white paint and sanded it again. I wanted to have a worn look, and with 1 coat of paint the grain shows through nicely.  Then I cut my words from vinyl and used it as a stencil for painting my words.

I added hooks (which I found at my local hardware store) to the board for the chore tags to be hung from. Since my kids are too little for printed words just yet, I found public domain clip art and printed those out on white card stock. I punched out my clip art pictures with Fiskars circle punches and attached them with Craft Glue Dots® to larger circles of Pink Paislee Prarie Hill patterned paper.

I set an eyelet through each chore tag to hopefully keep the medallions from ripping. I used a 4" piece of chain (also found in 3 ft lengths at my local hardware store) to hang the the medallions.

This is not the prettiest picture, but at least you can get an idea of what it looks like hanging on the wall in my house. Each night after my boys go to bed, I'll hang their chores for the next day (make bed, set table, help fold laundry, etc.) on their "to do" hook. When they wake up in the morning they can look at their job for the day, complete it at the appropriate time and move their medallion from the "to do" hook to the "done" hook. The hook in the middle holds all the extra medallions for chores that don't need to be done that day.  My boys are already excited about moving their medallions from the "to do" hook to the "done" hook". One other note about this board if you're thinking about making one for yourself: Some medallions I only have 1 of, for example "help mom sweep", because only 1 child needs to do this at a time. Some medallions I have 2 of, for example, "pick up the play room" will often be assigned to both boys on the same day.

Thanks for stopping by!