When summer began we were struggling to get into a good routine every day. My kids NEED structure. They like to know what we are doing and it motivates them.
It motivates me. Without structure I go C-R-A-Z-Y!!!!
I was talking with my mom one day and she reminded me about something she did when my brothers and I were little. She made a "House of God" outline on the side of our refrigerator that we could all see and it outlined what our home needed to be like in order to be a house our Heavenly Father would approve of.
This got me thinking a lot about the actual structure of our home, the environment that we are striving to have here and what we are trying to teach our children.
My children are very visual like I am. When they have something they can look at then they won't ask me all the time what it is we are going to be doing. They also like to know the order of things.
We had a Family Home Evening based on the scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants that explains what a House of God is.
I made this bulletin board that hangs in the kitchen as a reminder of the things that we talked about. It has three categories: Spiritual, Order and Learning
Spiritual Goals
Plan of Order
(This is where the chart below comes into play)
Learning Goals
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
First of all, I realized that my children are old enough to each contribute in their own way to our home. I want to teach them the value of hard work, that everyone must help out and to work before we play. I came up with this "chore chart," if you will, and called it "Daily Contributions."
Now that school has started a few of the responsibilities have changed. For instance, Brady has less household contributions and more homework, reading etc. When he has a good attitude while completing his school work and when puts his best effort forth he gets rewarded just as when he does his other contributions.
What they both have loved about this new "program" if you will, is that they get to move the pieces over after they have finished them. Brady loves to visually see that he has finished his tasks and can then go play. Olivia also enjoys visually knowing what she needs to do, but she is slower to get them done. It really does help to show her though that when Brady is done and gets to go outside and play what she needs to do to be able to join him.
These are some extra things that they can do to earn something back that they lost, such as playing with friends or to earn extra tokens.
I set up a token system so for most contributions they earn 1 token. This is a pretty simple reward system, but they can also lose their tokens through bad behavior, such as complaining, arguing, fighting and bad attitudes. I always give opportunities to earn extra tokens as well and can surprise them throughout the day with good behavior tokens.
Olivia gets tokens when she gets in the car and is buckled up right away. Brady gets tokens when he is helpful to me with Zach and is a nice brother to Olivia.
Every night they get their tokens before bed. 10 tokens = $1 (play money)
They can earn money to buy things from the "Good Job Box."
Brady has been able to buy two LEGO sets, a floatie to bring to Rigby Lake, and a few sand toys.
Olivia has bought bath paint for the tub, fairy wings, bath color tablets, sand toys, and a swim floatie.
They must also pay me tokens to watch a movie, tv show or play a video game. Olivia gets a few FREE shows in the morning before preschool and a FREE movie in the afternoon for her quiet time. Brady doesn't have FREE shows or movies except on Friday night Family Movie Night. They can also pay tokens for things like popcorn and chocolate milk. We do not have candy and I don't use it as a reward.
Something else we tried was an "Uh-Oh Jar" that has popsicle sticks with different consequences in it. I found that it didn't work as well for my children as taking tokens or privileges away. I have been thinking of maybe taking it in the car and seeing if it helps when they struggle with arguing in the car.
Actually something that we have been doing recently with Brady when he argues is he has to do 10 jumping jacks every time he argues. If he keeps arguing we keep adding 10. He hasn't gotten more than 40 yet, and it does seem to stop him in his tracks and refocus. Then after his jumping jacks we can talk about the situation.
Lastly, at the end of the day we try to evaluate these questions, of which they can also earn tokens for. Like I said, there are plenty of opportunities for token earning around here- IF they choose to.
(The "accidents" question is for Olivia)
