Thursday May 9 2013 (behavior central)

Chores and Bribery

So this is not a craft that I put together today, but it is a craft that has been very valuable in our house since it was made. I consider it behavior central for the munchkins.

So here it is, the boys' chores and rewards charts Green for Mater and Blue for the Rooster. On the bottom is a red, yellow, green system that helps us communicate how the boys are behaving with them. The chores are at the top and include things like getting dressed, picking up laundry, cleaning up toys, brushing their teeth, eating their dinner, taking a shower, clearing their dinner dishes, and doing homework. The little empty space between the two is the "reward" section.

So here is how it all works.

-If the boys are on green at the end of the day they earn a "marble" 

(technically it's a little ball magnet that's supposed to work as a pushpin on magnetic boards)

-If the boys complete all of their chores they can earn another marble 

(sadly this doesn't happen very often. Mostly due to cleaning up toys and finishing dinner)

-Here's where the bribery comes in. They can earn extra marbles for things that we deem marble worthy. For example, if they can behave for an entire trip to the store they can earn a marble, or in Rooster's case if he gets a good report from his teacher at the end of a school day he can earn an extra marble.

The marbles are very valuable to the boys because they can use them to "buy" toys/treats from what they call "the goody bag" it's just a big red Target bag, but it has things like vinyl wall stickers, Disney/Pixar Cars die cast toys and other small things. They have to earn 10 marbles to trade them in for a shopping trip in "the goody bag" or they can also save their marbles up to buy bigger things like movies, but being 2 and 4 they aren't very good at saving up.

They can also loose their marbles by misbehaving, although they always get a warning first.

One of the most important parts of the whole system though is that we DO NOT just give them toys when we go to the store and they see something that they love, even if it is on clearance or sale for super cheap. It goes into the bag first and they know it's in there so they will work really hard to earn it. Holidays and birthdays are the exceptions to this rule.

If anyone has any questions as to how I made these let me know and I will be more than happy to help.