Little Helpers

I wanted to get this post done before I wrote about our last games unit for those who are still going strong trying to finish out the school year.  For those who are on break, tuck this little idea away for next year.  Warning: lots of pictures coming your way!

I decided this year that I wanted my kiddos to help with the putting away of our room and maybe some prep for next year.  Then, I read a post from Mary at Sharing Kindergarten, and I was even more excited about this idea!

Mine looked like this:

Each job I came up with was on a sticky note stuck to my board.  There were multiple for each job depending on how many students I thought it would take to complete the task.  I chose students like I do for most activities in our class, "random reporter" sticks.  As I called their names, they came and chose a job.  As you'll see in the pictures, they were pumped to wear a post-it note.  #whatevermakesthejobfun   Once you finished a job, your "reward" was a new sticky note with a new job.  Once all the jobs were done, I put out odds and ends I had cleaned out of the room earlier in the week, and everyone got to choose a few things as "payment" for their hard work.

Our school requires us to label each piece of furniture with our room number.  I put the masking tape on each piece of furniture ahead of time, and this guy's job was to go around and write our room number on each one.

You can see 2 jobs here: stuffing new books in their independent book bags and cleaning to the seat sacks on the backs of chairs.  There were 2 people for each of these jobs.

This mess is labeling all the new puzzles our computer teacher passed on to us.  I color code the backs of my puzzles (same color dot on each piece of a puzzle for easy clean up).  There were 2 people at this job too.

I had about 1/2 a class worth of writing folders left over for this year, so 2 kiddos assembled them for next year.  I will make the rest when Target puts their back-to-school stuff out (though they can feel free to wait until the end of July for that!)

These 2 are making birthday bags for next year.  They LOVED their job, but I think it was mostly because they got to use my "grown up" stapler.

She is testing out all the pens at the writing center and throwing away the ones that don't work anymore.

These 2 loved their job too- sharpening pencils for next year. I never let them use the pencil sharpener, so I'm sure that had an impact on the job satisfaction.  At clean up time I heard "I hope Miss Hennon says 'remember where you were yesterday?  Go back and finish that job today.'"

These 2 took their job very seriously!  They are sorting crayons at each table by color. This was my first year doing this, and it was AMAZING.  No more "I can find my _____ crayon."  Blue & purple together, green & yellow, red/pink/orange, black/brown/gray/white.  I put 5 boxes of crayons per table.  They are sorted in yogurt containers.

Putting together all our puzzles to look for missing pieces.  This is the job everyone ended up pitching in on once the other jobs were done because there were quite a few puzzles.

Somehow I missed taking a picture of the pair organizing the classroom library.  They job was to go through the tubs of books and make sure all the books were in the right bins.  I also asked them to make sure the library looked like a place they would want to pick books from (covers facing forward, books going in the right direction, etc).

I would not hesitate to do this again next year.  It took about an hour and 15 minutes total for all jobs to be completed.  I think my kiddos saw the value of working together, and they were so excited to see my "secrets" of how I put together to get ready for the school year.  They have no idea how much it helped me out too!

Do you have your kiddos help?  What kinds of jobs do they have?