What is ‘Kids In Charge’ ?
How does it fit in?
What does it teach?
Setting Up ‘Kids In Charge’
Real Life Example


What is Kids In Charge?

It’s putting the kids in charge of:

• Choosing activities
• Organizing the chosen activity
• Taking responsibility for completing the chosen activity

This is a great learning opportunity that is not available to children by having them participate in activities chosen by adults. You can put kids in charge for a single activity, an afternoon, a day, or even an entire week. It all depends on what they are ready for, and how much you can handle.

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How does it fit in?

a. Kids will love it if you tell them that when they start getting a handle on all of
The Crabbies, becoming a CrabbieMaster, and using the ULTIMATE skills, they
will be able to do ‘Kids In Charge.’

b. Responsible children are very able to make good choices and contribute to
decisions on activities that you will do as a family or class.

c. Remind them that ‘Kids In Charge’ isn’t ONLY deciding what to do, but taking
responsibility for all parts of the activity, all the way through cleaning up if that’s what’s needed.

d. Explain that they can do many more fun things and that you are open to
and excited about their ideas, especially when everyone cooperates.
(TEST! Which Crabbies do you BEAT by this?!)

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What does it teach?

‘Kids In Charge’ is a positive concept for a number of reasons:

a. It is important that children learn how to manage free time without feeling bored or tempted to plop themselves in front of a TV or the computer or the latest video game.

b. Maturity and other benefits readily accrue from children learning to find their own things to do, and especially having support from their parents and teachers while they learn to do so.

c. Beyond this, ‘Kids In Charge’ spurs:

• Initiative
• Creativity
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Good Choices
• Responsibility
• Good Listening
• Being Good Examples
• Having Positive Attitudes
• Patience and Understanding

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Setting Up ‘Kids In Charge’

At our pre school there are two groups of children throughout the year that are ‘Kids In Charge’. The first taste of it is in the Spring with the group of preschoolers that have just gone through the CrabbieMaster/ULTIMATE program as described in this site. They are beginners and need to ease into the concept.

The summer program is a combination of these same young preschoolers plus former preschoolers who have been around for multiple summers and attend varying elementary schools in the area. The summer program is more like a day camp.

Assign Daily Chores

You and your ‘Kids In Charge’ decide how you want to do it. Sometimes we
alternate on who does what and sometimes we decide to have each child
have a job title for the entire summer. Every child is responsible for a few basic individual tasks (older children are assigned a younger child to help with the younger ones’ tasks):

• Filling water bottles
• Keeping track of the swimsuits, towels, etc.
• Setting up their own rest spots
• Cleaning up their own meals
• etc

‘Kids In Charge’ morning meetings

‘Kids In Charge’ will make choices on what the activities of the day will be according to the abilities and interests of the particular group attending. The Spring preschoolers are less experienced and still need more direction than the summer kids who really are capable of coming up with ideas that they recall from the past, or coming up with realistic new activities. The summer kids have an initial meeting to lay out overall plans for the entire summer and then have Monday morning meetings that lay out projected plans for the week and daily meetings for specific plans for the days.

This is where the kids’ WiseOnes’ skills come into play. Knowing each of their schedules they end up coming up with very WISE decisions. One example is that the latest group decided that if as a group they seemed tired (generally true on Mondays and Fridays) we would have an early lunch and an early rest right directly afterwards. It is important to note that ALL of us are still lying down for half an hour in the summer and we all agree that Too-Tired really is the biggest culprit when it comes to conflicts. With this plan, we have more quality afternoon
time and no longer have the feeling of ‘wasted’ days because we were too dragged down to have fun!

Adult role

You may be thinking that with the kids taking on your jobs what do you do? Congratulations! You have just been promoted! Think of yourself as an executive! You are now responsible for overseeing ‘Kids In Charge’ with a less hands-on style, but with the very important job of ensuring success by balancing the tough responsibility of letting go and not allowing chaos.

Key Rule (NO EXCEPTIONS) - Set boundaries that are appropriate for your situation. For example, we tell the summer kids this: the summer is too short to learn everything the hard way. If you are open to and supportive of their ideas as a whole, they will accept your decisions as positive contributions to the overall good. Remember, as the adult you are ultimately in charge and have the final say.
When needed "no" means "no".

Behavior Management

Use the stars in the Fun Stuff: Printables section for behavior management. Place a star for each of the “Kids In Charge” in a line at the top of a wall or your refrigerator or wherever else that will work for you. By now, you too are a WiseOne, and can adapt ideas in this site to suit your particular needs.

If a child either does something that clearly is against the CrabbieMaster or Ultimate WiseOne spirit (i.e. messes around during the rest time, hits someone, ignores you when you are talking to them), move the star down slightly from the position it started in. Younger children will feel better if you move the start back to the original position when it is evident that the child has turned the day around.

The 2005 group decided to leave the star moved and to put it back at the end of the day. They were secure enough that having the star slightly down from the others in the group was ok with them because they knew if it had been moved early on and not again that they had in fact turned the day around and didn’t need us to be dealing with the stars all day!

This is a key difference in the CrabbieMasters and “Kids In Charge”. The kids now are confident enough in themselves and in the fact that you are sincere in wanting the best for them. Even though this is different in what we so emphatically preached as your role for the CrabbieMasters, because you are calling attention to the negative, it is similiar in that you set it up with the kids AHEAD of time and the kids will understand that it is YOUR ROLE to help prepare them for the times they do not have you to monitor their choices. YOU ARE ON THEIR SIDE!!

It is your hope that your children will see this whole thing as what we adults would call constructive criticism. If they understand this means of behavior management, they are not as likely to take the methods of others in authority as a personal attack that results in a hit on your child’s self-esteem. The goal is that this will carry with them into their teen years and into adulthood. It is sort of like learning to ride a bike. At first, the training wheels are level with the back wheel and then as you get your balance the wheels are raised a little so that you still have them and if you lose your balance you just tip a little, but you don’t actually fall.

Explain to the kids that when you move the stars you are just reminding them
that the behaviors you have all tried to avoid are back and you don’t want them to have a bad day. Our experience has been that moving the stars works better than talking about what happened. As the kids get older it they respond better to the moving of stars, and they are inclined to tune out talk. It also works best to move the stars right away and not wait and see if things turned around. Moving the stars just serves as a reminder to the child that they have to try a little harder to rise above something that may be causing them to be off.
(i.e. The Too-Tired Crabbies got them, or Can’t-Do!)

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Real Life Example (How all of this CAN work)

a. The summer program part of our preschool includes a combination of the young preschoolers who have been there for at least one year and some of the older, now school-age kids, who were in the preschool before moving onto elementary school.

b. The summer program is called “Kids In Charge” and right from the beginning the older and younger children work together to set up the activities and divide up the chores.

c. One great example of a primary activity is going camping:

Some weeks we only do day-camping and a few times over the
summer we all go overnight camping. People are always amazed that it is possible to do this with so many kids, quite a few of them still of preschool age, but it really is very fun and easy because by this point they have learned the skills necessary for such an undertaking.

d. ULTIMATE WiseOnes are not only responsible, but also very imaginative. Many times the kids come up with ideas that we would never have thought of.

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