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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Princess Pulls Her Weight

As I journaled about before, The Princess is very helpful around the house already. I've been worried about starting her on Commissions because I didn't want her habits to turn from "helpful" to "Show Me The Money!". However, I think we have come up with a reasonable list of Commissionable tasks that we don't expect her to do all the time now, but that she is fully capable of doing when asked.

  1. Put away her folded laundry
  2. Clean up toys before naptime
  3. Clean up toys before bedtime
  4. Recycle!
Each of those tasks we will ask her to do for Commission. If she does them, she gets paid. If she doesn't, well, I'll let you figure that one out.

The Recycling task is a different type of task though. Frugal Mister gets the credit for this one! We recycle (Do It! All the cool kids are!) everything we can in our city provided recycleable containers, but thought we could teach a very good lesson with the bottles and cans we typically just give to the city!

The Princess already helps clear the table after dinner, which typically includes Frugal Mister's empty soda can. Rather than just throwing it in with all the other non-refundable recyclables, we will encourage The Princess to separate it into it's own bin. At the end of the month, we will take all the cans to the recycling place behind the local grocery store and her "work" all month long will be paid to her! It's another form of "if you work, you get paid", because if she doesn't put them in the seperate container, she won't get paid! If her task sheet says she only put the cans in for half the month and Mom and Dad did it the rest of the month, she'll get half of the earnings. Simple, right? Well, as simple as working with a 3 year old can be! We'll be doing the first month so she understands how it works and we'll start our Commission Tasks around her birthday next month.


2 comments:

  1. That's great that you have found a method that works for your family to teach your Princess to recycle! We've had our kidlets recycling since they were basically walking. They will even bust their Daddy occasionally when something recyclable ends up in the garbage. My older kidlet is often explaining to his little sis that they have to turn off lights to "protect the planet" and how its very sad when trees are cut down. I think the 'protect the planet' came from reading a Nat'l Geo Kids mag, Earth Day issue, and the cutting of trees is something that he brought home from school. Either way, I'm glad they are growing up and learning environmental responsibility from a young age. I like that its both good for the environmnet and for Mom & Dad's wallet!! :>

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  2. I was recycle mom for Bella's class last year, every Friday the kids would bring in their cans and bottles, and me and the girls would pick them up, and take them to the recycling center and then the proceeds would go back to the class. They loved going and now they're in charge of all the soda cans and bottles in the house. I think it's an important lesson and the kids think it's fun. Way to go.

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