Organizing Our Home: The Reward/Chore Board

Our children are still fairly small, but I think that it is never too early to start parenting and teaching. Recently, we have been dealing with frustrating power struggles and out of control tantrums and some just plain bad behavior. My husband and I came up with this system and it really has helped.

Each of our sons has a small lined notepad with their name at the top and when they obey, help, or do something that is good and we want repeated they get to put a star on their notepad and then I write what they did next to it. Likewise, they can also get frowny faces for doing things that deserve a frowny face. (We had a family meeting and the boys helped make family rules-so they know).

I think this is the real key to the system: Before bed each night, we sit down as a family and DADDY reads each boy's list and then we talk about it. We minus the frowns from the Stars and the boys get rewarded a penny for each. (5 stars-3 frowns= 2 pennies). The boys "sign" their name at the bottom of the day to say that they got their pennies and we start brand new and fresh in the morning.

This has worked really REALLY well with our boys, they love to use their "pennies" to buy a special treat or books at the D.I. and having to make an accounting with their Dad each night has made a HUGE difference.

To make the cute board in the hallway I:
           1. Sanded and Primed an old window
           2. Painted
           3. Distressed the edges
           4. This window already had funky nails and hardware on it, so I left it and that is what I hand their notepads from.
           5. Added the vinyl..... This phrase comes from a children's song that we sing when we are helping do our chores.... and they always get stars when helping do chores.
           6. Attached heavy duty hangers to the back of the window.
           7. Measured, installed wall anchors, and hung it up.

What works for rewards/consequences at your house?