Garden Helpers Choice Board

Six pictures of real jobs. Watering, sweeping, picking up sticks, feeding compost, checking the seedlings, carrying the basket. The child picks.

Choice is the mechanism. A four year old who selected sweeping will sweep for eleven minutes. A four year old assigned sweeping will sweep for forty seconds. We have measured this by accident many times.

The board also removes the daily negotiation, because the answer to what am I doing is on the wall.

The sheet has the six job cards, the board layout, and a note on rotation. Let children repeat the same job for weeks if they want. The expertise that develops is visible and other children start asking them for help, which is worth far more than variety.