Help Dad Paint His Boat
There are 80 Chore Cards in each Helping Cards pack, 10 Excuses! cards, and the How To Play card (although probably every household is going to add their own twists to the rewards, the number of chores you need to do to get a reward, or how long they're going to take). You also get 10 blank Write Your Own cards to adapt the game to your own household.
Last weekend someone demanded to buy one of the prototype packs. He asked the price. £25, but as I said to him, there are four wording issues on this dummy pack, another on the front of the box, and it's probably also got curry sauce on it because I was showing it to the person whose idea it was in the first place over a poppadum or two yesterday evening.
I told him there were 80 different chores in the pack.
"Does it have "Help Dad paint his boat?"
No, I told him, but it does have 10 blank cards specifically, so you can adapt the game yourself.
He paid £25, even when I e, even when I explained the four printing issues and the curry sauce again.
I hadn't thought of the "Paint Dad's Boat" chore. Reading The Lost Boys report, though, maybe I should have added "Read A Book." I never thought of that as a chore at all.
The number of children reading for pleasure is plummeting in the UK, and the figure is, again, worse for boys. The National Literacy Trust (NLT) conducts annual reviews on the literacy of children and young people aged 8-18 across the UK. The 2024 review highlighted, alongside an overall decline in reading by children, the “plight of boys” was overwhelming. When asked if they enjoyed reading in their free time, 40.5% of girls agreed, compared to only 28.2% of boys. Moreover, the gender gap “nearly tripled compared with the previous year, increasing from a 4.8% difference in 2023 to a 12.3%difference in 2024.” This was due to a decline in reading enjoyment from boys (which plummeted 12.3%) rather than an increase in girls (who also dropped, but only by 4.8%).
There is a strong correlation between time spent reading and academic achievement. Therefore, boys decreasing reading levels could be a potential factor causing this educational imbalance. We cannot have a serious discussion about declining reading levels, amongst boys and girls, without addressing the rise of screen use in childhood. Frankly, kids are not bored anymore. Where free time was previously occupied with playing or reading, it is now filled with smartphone usage. One commentator remarked, “The smartphone is, of course, the most formidable enemy the book has ever faced: a black hole of limitless entertainment”.
If we want to support children to enjoy reading, in order to develop greater levels of cognition, then we must face the pressing issue of technology head on. Finally, it is a tragedy that over half of prisoners are functionally illiterate with a reading age of lower than 11. With the lowest daily reading levels for boys that the NLT has “ever recorded”, it is conceivable that the 96% male-concentrated prison population will become even more illiterate in the future.