In an earlier post, (Organization) System Saturday-Our Helping Hands, I talked about the system I came up with to get our children to help in the kitchen on a daily basis.   Then in my (not quite) Wordless Wednesday-Our Homeschool Classroom post, I had pictures and descriptions of our homeschool room in our house.  One of those pictures was our chore chart that is used for my children's everyday morning chores and daily chores that is located just inside our homeschool classroom.  This post has the pictures again with descriptions:
The blue paper is covering up each child's name for privacy.  We bought 4  key rails at our local  Lowe's hardware store, (I only could find white ones for the link) one for each child.

The first two hooks on each rail are for each child's everyday/morning chores or reminders. So the first one is to "Get Dressed", then behind that I have a picture/word card that says "Make Bed", etc.  The last two hooks are for their chores that they are assigned Monday through Friday.  So on Monday, they know to "Change (their bath) Towels" and bring the dirty towels down to the laundry room to be washed.  Each day of the week they are assigned a different chore to complete.

This photo shows how they flip their chore cards over and place it on the next hook.  So this child already got dressed and flipped the card.  The next card, "Make Bed", will remind her to do that next and then she will flip it.  The third hook has "Put Dirty Clothes in the Laundry Room" and I wrote Wednesday on this card because she is to do this chore each Wednesday.  On the other cards I have written the other days of the week to go with each type of chore.  I laminated the chore cards and I write the days of the week on the cards with a Vis-a Vis pen so that I could easily erase and change days if I needed to.

I spent alot of time searching for the best type of chore chart system that would work best for our family. There are so many great ideas on blogs, websites, and search engines for chore charts it's mind boggling and overwhelming!  I knew I wanted a chore system that I could make changes to easily to fit our family's needs through the years.  With the key rails and chore cards I can easily take chore cards away or add other types of chores without having to spend alot of time remaking another whole new chore chart.

I found most of the pictures for the chore cards on the Workbox Yahoo group that I am a member of under the "Files" section of the group.  I then added/deleted chores from the existing chore page that was in the  "Files" section to fit our family's needs.

I have the chore cards that I made and used saved as a word document and I don't know how to save it as a link for this post.  If you would like a copy of the chore cards that I used for the key rails, you can Contact Me here and fill out the form
and I will be more than happy to send them to you as an attachment.

Our Helping Hands I typed out each kitchen chore and pasted them on yellow envelopes that I made into pockets. The chores that I have on the labels are:

• Set Table-Cups
• Set Table-Silverware/Napkins
• Set Table-Dishes
• Dishwasher Duty (this child takes out the clean silverware and cups from the dishwasher and when they are done they put their hand in the back of the envelope so the next child's name is showing)
• Clean Kitchen Table
• Vacuum Kitchen (we have hardwood floors)
• Clean Small Table (besides our family kitchen table we also have a child-sized wooden picnic table in the kitchen)

So each week one of my 3 cupcakes is assigned to a couple of these duties for a full week then we switch the hands by placing the hand in front of each envelope to the back to show the next child's name. (except the dishwasher duty assignment is rotated as often as I run the dishwasher which is alot during the week). I used die-cut handprints that I got from a local teacher supply store and wrote each cupcake's name on the hands as you can see from the photos. This has been a great way to keep track of who is in charge of what chore in our kitchen. Sometimes little hands (ie: cupcake #4) decides to take the helping hands out of their envelopes, however, and my older cupcakes start arguing trying to remember who had what chore. But, for the most part this system is working for us for now. I hope to find/create other effective organization systems that work for our family for other areas in our life. So stay tuned as I hope to keep you posted! Please share your ideas on some ways you stay organized by posting a comment! I love to meet others and learn from them! Thanks!