After talking about my chore chart with several friends and a little prodding from my dear friend, I've decided to share a little about my chore chart with you all.  I first heard about a similar concept at a homeschool conference and decided to come home and try it.  To my surprise, it worked well as long as we stuck with them.  I'm not a very orderly or scheduled person, so this is a wonderful tool in my toolbox! 

Our chore chart was made out of poster board with 2 pockets per child labeled To Do and Complete. Each child has their own set of pockets with their chores written on index cards. They are color coded for morning, afternoon and evening. When they are done with that chore, they move the card down into the completed pocket. That way I can monitor their progress by checking out where the cards are placed and to see how much more work they need to do.

For example, my 10 year old ds has the following cards:

Get Dressed
Brush Teeth after breakfast
Tidy Bedroom
unload dishwasher
switch out laundry
Clear and wipe bathroom counter
Put away folded clothes
Clear and wipe table after dinner (all are responsible for dishes though)

Then I may put some school things in there, too that they can do on their own without me...so that they get a jump start on their day. We also have room patrol 3 times a day, where they run around the room and put away anything that doesn't belong in that room. There are more chores I'm not thinking of...but you get the general idea. When we use the cards, we're much happier. When we don't, our life turns chaotic very fast!

I recently revamped the kids' cards and decided to make myself a set of cards as well.  Simple cards to give Reagan her medicine, start planning supper or to switch out the laundry and to read my Bible (although there's a lot more than that!).  The days that we all use our cards flow sooo smoothly.  There's days when it doesn't work to do all the things on our cards, but on those days, as long as we give it our best effort, we can easily pick up where we left off the next day!