Kids Chores As A Business
by Lynette
My babies are no longer babies or toddlers for that fact. *Sigh* How time flies! With the baby and toddler stages out of the way, the kids are old enough to do things for themselves and of course help around the house.
Ask any parent, the ‘help’ part is pretty challenging. When they were toddlers, ‘help’ is fun and interesting and full of whoops of joy and “Good girl!” or “Great job!” or “Yay!”. I guess this shouldn’t stop as they grow older but it also gets cheesier to say that when they finish a chore. My eldest will probably say something to the effect, “Mommy, that’s for babies”.
Yelling doesn’t really help either - no surprise there. So how to challenge these kids to get off their butts and help? I’ve tried using a monetary system and that actually has had positive response. But sometimes it fails because I fail at properly updating their pay sheet - bad mommy!
While bumming around the web, I was delighted to come across Kablinga. Kablinga is a site where kids get to turn their chores into a business. It has a web based office space with email so they can accept tasks and communicate with parents about them. It’s also a task manager where they can keep track of what they have done and check them off.
There’s a virtual bank where they can see how they have in it. It even has a built in web store they can spend that money on. If there is an item of bigger value they want, there is a score board to help them keep track how close they are to reaching their goal.
All great ideas and I really can’t wait to try it out for my eldest. This is also super exciting for me because next year, my middle one will be in kindergarten and will be able to read better and knowing her personality, this is something she’ll totally dig.
According to Kablinga FAQs, it is free now and anyone who signs up now gets a free lifetime membership but they will be charging $7 a month to use soon. Guess I’m heading back there to sign up.
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January 4th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
LOVE that Lynette ! going to check it out straight away - thanks
January 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
ahh it’s only taking US addresses !! it’s looking for a zip code etc.. I’m going to contact them and see what the story is !
January 4th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Oh what a shame Darina! I wasn’t even thinking about that. Maybe it’s to do with payments and their internal shopping mall. I dunno. Keep us posted what you hear.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I actually like a site called Handipoints (www.handipoints.com) much better. They don’t charge and there’s a lot more fun things for kids to do. Sometimes I feel that, with Kablinga, that site is trying to make little office drones out of kids!
March 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Hey Liv, thanks for pointing Handipoints out. I’ll definitely check it out.