Week 41: Learning Life Skills With Chores Bingo

You can create your own Chores Bingo Board at http://www.thetripclip.com. This is a great way to get your kids to do some chores and keep it fun. Unlike daily assigned chores, this bingo board mixes it up a little, so kids try (and learn) different jobs. It works surprisingly well for spreading the work load and keeping it interesting.

Start by choosing the chores you want to put on the board.  Make sure that you keep the chores age appropriate – this list from The Trip Clip is a great place to look for ideas:

Once you’ve made your Bingo board, there are a number of ways you can use it to keep your kids engaged and get those chores done!

• 5 in a line – ask them to pick 5 chores in a row or column to do over the course of a week.  If they’re like my kids, they will do everything they can to optimize this, but you’ll still get some work out of them.  The next week you can create a different BINGO board.
• Roll for it – have your kids roll two dice every day to determine which of the 25 chores they will do that day.  The first dice tells you the row #, the second one tells you the column #. If either of the dice is a 6, treat it as a wild card – the child can choose!  And two 3’s means they’re off the hook :).
• Family BINGO – challenge the whole family (parents included) to complete the board in a week. Every morning you take turns picking your chore for the day, and cross it off once it’s been chosen. By the end of the week, even the chores no one wants to do will get done.  The kids especially like this one because they like it when the grownups have to do chores too.
• Pay for chores – it never hurts to bribe your kids a little, right?  Offer them some money (a quarter? a dollar?) for each chore on the board they complete, and a bonus for finishing the whole board. Money is surprisingly motivating!

If you have other ideas for how to use the Chores Bingo Board with your kids, leave them in the comments below. I’d love to hear your ideas!