Who thought chores could be so cool???

I was looking through my issue of Real Simple and they had a family special edition out. I love this magazine, there is always great recipes, tip and tricks, and other family-related information. In the current issue, there is a listing of parent friendly websites. I came across a site to help organize your child's chore lists and rewards (if you have something like that set up) so I figured eh, why not see what it's all about. Man, was I surprised! It happens to be the coolest site for tracking chores, playing games, and helping kids become computer friendly all in one! It's called Handipoints.


You can set up one profile that contains all your kids (and husband if he is not doing his chores either, lol). So for me, under my login I have a profile for each of my 2 boys, that they can log into separately by themselves. I go in and chose what chores they have to do and when. Handipoints makes it so easy to chose chores, they have just about everything you can think of, including being nice to your brother, not being rude, helping with groceries, taking a shower, eating new foods, homework, and everything in between. I chose about 18 for each of my kids; they also include a few demerits, like being rude to mom or dad and not going to bed when you are supposed to. Then your kids can come in and check what they have to do and then check them as done, you can make it password-protected so they can't check everything off without verification if you want to, which like the site suggests is good if you have behavior based items on there. They get gold stars and purple stars for doing their chores. The star amounts are different based on the chore, (cleaning the cat box is a larger chore then brushing their teeth so it earns more stars). Oh, and you can even print out the chore charts if you don't want your little one using the computer everyday.

When you log in, you will see your 'parent portal' it will show each child, the amount of yellow and purple stars, a slider bar so you can grade each chore that they said they completed, and a check box to check of if in fact they did it at all. If your child is graded with a B or higher they get a few more purple stars then normal. The parent portal also shows you the last time they logged in, and how many different goals they are saving for. There is even a parent's forum.

The yellow stars are redeemable for rewards that the parent decides on, it can be money, store bought items, going somewhere, or anything else you chose. The kids can see how far they are to reaching the goal. I think it is a wonderful motivational tool, the kids can see the pic of the item, and visually see how close they are to getting it.

The purple stars are redeemable in the game section of the site. Each child starts off with a CoolCat and 60 purple stars, they can name him/her and buy clothing for it. There is a town that the cats can walk around in and see other kids' cats walking around too. In order for the kids to buy their cat new clothes and/or play games they need to earn the purple stars. Since every chore is worth yellow stars and purple stars then your child gets rewarded either way.

I haven't checked out the chat feature yet, but it did have an option when your cat is walking around. In addition to chatting, the kids can make their cats wink, dance, and do a bunch of things, they can also 'think' things and/pr say pre-formed sentences like 'I am a boy' and 'Hi', to other people or just in general.

As you can see I totally in love with this new site. If you sign your kids up, keep an eye out for my boys their cats/usernames are JohnnyBCool and Catusoptimus (yes just like Optimus Prime, clever huh?)

I would love to hear how some of you liked the site and if you found it valuable or not.