Mom to Mom: Share Your Best Tips

This is my first time to join in this link up, but, this looked like fun and I love gathering good tips from other moms. Missy is our gracious hostess over at It's Almost Naptime. This week she shared about how she developed chore charts for her family. She gave wonderful examples of how she tailored each child's chores according to their developmental ability.

I was inspired by an idea I got from a couple raising four children; a seventeen year old son, a fourteen year old son, a twelve year old daughter and a son who was around the age of four or five. The couple shared about how they don't give their children allowances. They believe that each member of the family is responsible for doing their part to help the household run to the best of it's ability. Instead they helped each child pick something they could do to make money of their own and then taught them how to manage that money through saving, investing and a checking account. Their oldest son learned to detail cars, and he was so good at it he was getting more business than he could handle on his own, so he hired some of his friends to work with him. Within a year or so he owned his own small business and employed five of his friends. Their fourteen year old son made and managed his money through mowing lawns. Their twelve year old daughter started baking with her mother and turned that into their own little side business right out of their home. Their youngest son started collecting and recycling aluminum cans in order to make money. I decided to try the last idea with my own children.

My parents always taught me to leave things better than the way you found them. While I am not a full on, go green, all natural kind of mom, I respect and admire those who are, and I try to learn as much as I can from them. My children (who are three and four) and I started collecting cans back in Ohio to help out a neighbor. Now, we collect them and split the money between their piggy banks. This has given me an opportunity to teach them about reusing and recycling things that we normally might just throw away. It has also given me a chance to start talking to them about tithing and giving money to those in need. These are challenging concepts for a three and four year old, but, it's a start.

I hope this little project is something we can build on in years to come, something I can hand over to them to take care of on their own. I want them to learn to be resourceful, and to leave things better than the way they found them.

Here are a few pictures I have taken over the last couple months. Three full bags of cans off to the recycling center.
Another trip another day with two bags.
This is where we drop off our bags to be weighed and added to the truck.
We have also started recycling boxes.
Such good helpers!
This is a picture of the junk yard, where we drop off our cans to be recycled. The kids think it's fascinating to watch the diggers and cranes and all the men at work. And I think it's great for them to see the people who work in our community and make it a better place.