Summer Reward Program

Tomorrow is Ella's last day of kindergarten. I am so excited to have all the kids home! On the other hand, with all the kids home it takes about 30 minutes for the house to look like it was hit by a tornado. What to do? I mean, i have great kids. They get along great, with the daily occassional fight/hit/push /kick. They mind and use their manners most of the time. I can take the four of them to the mall or a store or restaurant without being worried about them going crazy. However, when we are home we get so busy hanging out, crafting, swimming, and playing that housework begins to suffer. Yes, i would rather hang out with my kids than do housework. Big surprise. HA! My Family Fun magazine came in the mail and as i was flipping through i came across an article written by a lady with 5 kids, ages 16 to 3. It was about her solution to getting all her kids to help around the house with out her having to stay on them. She got jars, decorated one for each kid and then had a chart with all the chores they could do and each chore had a certain number of marbles/gems attached to it. Example, clean the litter box = 3 gems. Each child place their "rewards" in the jar and when the jar was full they had choices for a prize. I thought this might work with a little tweaking. I mean the kids needed to be able to fill their jars in a few weeks instead of a month and trying to find ways for them to earn points that they can all do. I appreciate that the chores are things they can all do and they can pick which ones they prefer to do and i don't have to assign them. We are starting simple and see if this system works. Fingers crossed that it doesn't go down in flames like our white board/ sticker reward chart that was NOT little kids friendly.

Day 1: Jack made his bed yesterday trying to earn pom poms for his jar. I explained we had to decorate them first. :) I love he is so eager. They decorated while i cooked dinner and this morning they woke up and Jack was the only one who made his bed. :) I am hoping the other two pick up on that habit. Jack quickly earned pom poms for feeding the dogs, making his bed, etc. Sadly he had to give two back for biting. That is a mistake he says " i will not make again". John showed no interest. I guess after watching Jack beg for things to do all day he got the idea and he set the table, cleaned up pool toys, cleared the table and now follows me around asking if he is going to get a "ward" for doing a task. :) Ella was quite excited about the gems for her jar. End of the day, toys are put up, the kids took both trash cans out to the road and brought them back in, all pool toys are put away, table was set and plates cleared, and one bed was made. All earn about 5 gems for their jars. Looks promising.