Chore charts can help keep kids organized and teach them how to build good habits. These free printable chore charts for kids will help you teach your kids organization and accountability.
Seeing all the day’s chores laid out visually makes it easier for kids to remember what they need to get done. It’s like a game of bingo – they know it’s not over until they’ve filled all the squares.
To make it interesting for younger kids, you can use gold stars or heart or smiley stickers instead of a boring check mark. Those can give kids an extra incentive.
Free Printable Chore Charts
Remember: you don’t have to print a new chart every day. You can put them in sheet protectors, mark them with dry erase markers, and wipe them off every day.
- Here’s a very simple black and white chart from Great Schools. This one is for purists, anyone without a color printer, or anyone who doesn’t want to use up expensive color ink in their printer.
- Viva Veltoro offers a colorful task chart in two versions: one with a reward for finishing all the chores, and one without.
- This fun, colorful chart with smiley faces can be great for motivating younger kids.
- Kristi from I Should Be Mopping The Floor provides one flexible chore chart in 8 pretty designs. You can have a different design for every day of the week.
- Clean Mama offers a fun system with printable charts plus a “Pick a Chore” jar full of colorful popsicle sticks with a different chore on each stick.
- IMom’s chart separates morning and evening tasks for kids to help them get it together before school every morning.
- Chart Jungle is a great source for printable charts of all sorts. For slightly older kids, Chart Jungle also offers Chart Bucks. These are printable coupons kids can earn and “spend” on rewards from you. This is a great alternative to paying them money for their chores or connecting chores to an allowance. It still shows them the concept of working for a reward, but enables you to reward them with gifts or events instead.
- There’s also a Point System Chore Chart which is more similar to earning grades at school. If you want to make sure your child understands the concept of doing class assignments and passing tests in order to make good grades, this is a good option.
What about the grown-ups?
For organizing the whole household and making sure everyone does their part, you can print a chart for each room. Put it in a plastic sheet protector and hang it up on a door or wall with a dry erase marker attached.
Everyone checks off chores as they do them each week, then you wipe off the checks at the beginning of the next week and start fresh. You can have them initial rather than check off if the kids are complaining that they don’t all do equal work (or for that matter, if one of the parents feels they’re pulling all the weight).
This teaches kids the concept of working for the good of the whole family instead of just themselves. It also reinforces the idea that doing a little bit of maintenance frequently prevents the need to do big miserable jobs later.
Using printable chore charts can help you in a couple of ways:
- Keeping kids motivated to do chores. Whether you give them rewards or gold stars or just make them put off playing until all their chores are checked off, a printable chart gives kids a sense of exactly what’s expected from them, and how far away they are from their rewards/goals.
- Keeping other members of the household on board. Kids emulate their parents and older siblings. If kids see other members of the household not pulling their weight, they’ll feel it’s not fair to them. The chore chart makes it very clear if anyone’s getting by with any laziness.
- Making expectations crystal clear. How many times has your family gotten into an argument about who said what when? With the chore charts, it’s all carefully detailed which chore is whose responsibility. You don’t have to have disputes because of confusion over what’s expected of everybody.