For our management system at home the boys have usually earned fuzzies or marbles for positive behaviors. When the jar is full some grand reward. (Meaning like a $1 Frosty.) Over time, this has lost its novelty and our latest system has instead been nagging many kindly reminders.
I've been inspired by Crystal before; she's a go-get 'em, always-getting-a-new-project-done type. Last time I went over I snapped a shot of their new job chart:
They earn "family bucks" to eventually buy something from "the family store". This sounded fun and basic enough that even I could keep up on it.
I couldn't quite recreate that lovely dark framed magnet board, but I came up with something that works for me as a nice alternative I think.
At Michaels I bought this square dark corkboard set of 3 ($9) and some little teal paper bags in the invitation section ($2). I printed off some $1s and $5s in bulk, "laminated" each bag with packing tape for endurance and taped the job labels on each pouch. Pretty simple.
Each time they do a job/positive behavior they get a Peterson Buck. The golden star indicates they get double bucks for that category for the week. The jobs/behavior will change every few weeks--hopefully--as behaviors like "staying in bed until 6:30am" or "clearing the table" become routine.
Right now Seth needs $25 and Noah has $12 to earn a reward. On Saturday mornings we count our bucks. We (with Seth at least) analyze where he got the most bucks ("Extra Peterson Bucks" for good manners) and where he got the least that he can improve for next week ("Trying New Food"). We open up the Peterson Store-- small Sterilite box of $1 toys, treats or coupons and they each choose one. Later on I'll stratify prices but for now we're keeping it simple. And it's been really fun.
