Three Mobile Apps For Children That Turn Household Chores Into A Game

Getting your child to do a few household chores can be very frustrating, stressful, and challenging. To successfully pull your child away from the television, computer, or a game console to clean his room or to take out the trash, you need to motivate him. This means that the chores have to be fun and exciting, but how can you turn regular household chores into a fun and challenging game? This is where mobile phone applications come in handy.

As a parent, you might feel like digital games are not a promising way to get your child off his bedroom or off the couch. You might even feel skeptical about the ability of mobile apps to inspire your child to do his chores. But there is a new breed of children apps, designed primarily for children under the age of 12, which aims to turn ordinary household chores into a fun game.

These applications present chores in a very entertaining way. It also offers rewards which range from collectible monsters, redeemable digital coins, or incentive bonus points. Listed below are some of the popular chore apps for children.

iRewardChart

This mobile application brings reward chart into your smartphone. It comes with a customizable, interactive interface that helps you keep track of your child’s responsibilities, chores, and good behavior. It also allows you to customize the rewards so that you can give them the appropriate reward for a job well done or for good behavior.

Your child will earn gold stars or points for every completed task and red stars for failing to do certain chores. The red stars will reduce their points. The ultimate goal is to score enough points to cash in on rewards you have set. This application even lets you record praises so that your child can listen in on them after completing the tasks. iRewardChart was named by MacWorld 2011 as the Best Parent app.

ChoreMonster

This is another fun app that can turn a seemingly endless list of chores into an interactive, fun, and engaging game. It can give your child a reason to get his chores done and keep you from stressing out about all household tasks that still needs to be done.

ChoreMonster has two versions- for children and parents. The parent’s version lets you set up the list of tasks, deadlines, points, and rewards for completing each task. You are also given the option to accept or deny the completed tasks so that you can observe and inspect how well your child did the chore. For instance, if he submitted “sort your unused toys” as a completed task, you need to check whether he sorted his unused toys for charity and storage. This makes it easier for you to know which toys should go into a self-storage unit and which ones to give away.

If he did it correctly, then you can give him points. For the child’s version, he needs to log in and see the chore list and the rewards and points for getting the tasks done. The points that your child has earned can be redeemed for the rewards you have initially set up. This system encourages positive reinforcement for children to do the things they won’t normally do on their own.

Your Rule

This mobile application was named as Editor’s choice by bestappsforkids.com. This application allows your child to choose their own character in the application. Each character has their own set of chores and they grow by leveling-up with every completed chore. The character will earn new gadgets and powers. Completed tasks will also earn your child coins which he can use to unlock new characters or he can use it on his personalized “wishlist”.

This application also encourages healthy competition because the homepage lets you see the progress of each child. Industrious children will quickly be rewarded with the improvements of their character in the next stage. You will be surprised to see that chores can quickly turn into a race.

Citations:

• anthony kelly.”iphone”. June 6, 2009. Online Image. Flickr. Oct 15, 2013

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License: Creative Commons
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This guest post is written by Kris Hopkins. She used a few children’s app in the past but was highly satisfied with the three mobile applications she listed in this article. She even used these applications to motivate her child to choose the unused toys, clothes, and other items that he was willing to put to a self-storage facility like US Storage Centers. In exchange for storing the items, she rewards her child with redeemable points and coins.