instant gratification
In an effort to get the girls more motivated about their jobs around the house I decided to implement a new system. I saw this reward board posted on a blog recently and immediately knew this would be perfect for my short-termed memory girls. I thought they’d be more excited about the new routine if they got to help make the reward board, so we started the project on this Monday’s family home evening. The process involves lots of Mod Podge for the patterned paper on the frame and sheet metal, and I thought they could handle that step. They did pretty good and also handed me magnets to glue to the back of the tin, circle boxes. There were several more steps, and I have been doing those periodically throughout the week with the girls anxiously waiting for the final product. At last, I completed the final steps today which included inserting chores and the rewards for those chores. The original design called for just putting the chores on folded pieces of paper inside the boxes, but I figured it would be easier to control what chores get done and when. We may not need or have time to have the floors vacuumed and what not.
It now hangs on our computer armoire’s door via a 3M hook that I colored brown with a Sharpie marker.
A closer look. As you can see the “rewards” are things such as coins, stickers, candy, and erasers. The stickers go with the more desirable chores such as brushing Sadie or writing Grandma/Grandpa a letter. Whereas the candy and eraser will require a little more elbow grease to acquire such as washing floors, vacuuming, and helping to fold laundry. The harder/more time consuming chores also result in a few more (or higher valued) coins. It may take a few times to see what chores are most popular and easiest for them to really see what rewards fit best.
In case you’re wondering what that thing is in the middle. It’s a large, flat marble that has “Hawley Helpers” magnified through (I know, it’s super cheesy). I only had 24 tin boxes and had a big gap in the middle. This idea came to me because I have too many of those dang marbles and magnets to last a lifetime. I had to use 4 magnets though to get the marble to be similar in height to the boxes.
In other news, Violet gets really lonely during our dinnertime each night. In order to include her, I put her in her bumbo on top of the dinner table. She loves it!
However, this sometimes proves to be a bit too exhausting for her.
Lastly, the girls got have their faces painted again by Cuddles the Clown again the other night. We didn’t get done with swimming until around 6:00 p.m., and Mike wasn’t going to have time to eat with us due to a scout meeting. I remembered that Culver’s has their kids’ night on Tuesday nights and thought it’d be a fun treat for the girls. We were surprised though to see that Cuddles and Billy were there because they don’t do all the kids’ nights. Mimi was so prissy about her new look. When were walking out of the restaurant to go home she put her hand on hip and shook her bum violently back and forth all the way to the door. It caused a lot of people to giggle.
