I was talking to my mom today about starting a chore chart for Brandon this week. I did some googling, and found one I liked. I found it at this blog. The basics of her chart (or how I think I read it) are this. Each day there are basic expected chores, brush teeth, take a bath etc, once it’s completed they turn it over and it says done. I think if the kids complete their basic chores they get a set amount of money. Then on the right side they have the option to do other chores, like cleaning something, or taking out trash. Each of those chores has a value on the back. At the top they have clean up tokens, so if they clean up a toy or mess before they start a new one they get and extra .10 for doing that. At the end of the day they use their money to buy game tokens. What the tokens are, are 30 minutes of computer or Wii time. $1.00 equals 30 minutes. On the bottom are smiley faces. On the back are frowny faces. What I think happens is if they aren’t being good or completing chores their smiles get turned to frowns. 3 frowns in one day means they can’t cash in their tokens. They still earn them, they just can’t spend them that day.
Here is her entire board
This is their game tokens once they earn enough they can buy them
This shows her extra clean up, and her additional chores (and her seriously good hand writing)
Here you see the kids basic chores
And their smileys
So here is my conundrum. Brandon is only 4. He is allowed to play Noggin on the computer but only on weekends. I don’t think it would work having him buy computer time all week, because he wouldn’t understand losing something that day if he wasn’t good. My mom and I discussed letting him earn real money and then taking him on Friday to the dollar store. I still like that idea, but again, I really like the idea of something daily right now. Kids attention span doesn’t last a week right now. Brandon really doesn’t know the difference between Monday and Friday. I feel that in the beginning I need to create a daily prize. But it can’t just be one prize like desert it has to be something he can build up or earn. Meaning if he sets the table, or shares with Codi he gets bonus points. I can not for the life of me come up with something he could earn daily, that could be increased or decreased. I also decided that if he gets write ups at school that counts as a frowny. Instead of the clean up points I would do what they used to do in his old school which was called, "getting caught doing something good." So if I walked in and found him sharing, or cleaning or helping Codi or whatever, he would get points for being caught being good. In his old class each day if they were good they got stamps each time. At the end of the week you got a ticket for every smiley stamp and then your tickets were entered in to win a prize. I kind of think maybe he could earn "tokens" at the end of each day. Then at the end of each week he could get a certain amount of money for each token to spend, but what could I do at night? What can he buy? I suppose I could do trampoline time or outside time I dunno there just has to be something. I still want him to earn money for his extra chores and basic chores, but I think he should earn the play tokens for completing all of his chores, and for every smiley left at the end of the day. Whats your opinion oh wonderful bloggy universe.
As a side note, this just came to me. I do have a small bulletin board with a chalk board on the other side. So at the end of each day he could make stars or tallys or something for his money or tokens and then see what he has. I was thinking that each token should just be the same amount of money. So he can talley up 40 tokens for the week and earn $2.00 or something. It might be fun for him to watch his weekly tallies grow. But I still want something to take away if he gets three frownys. Maybe he doesn’t have to get anything special besides his money, but there has to be one thing he loses if he has three frowns at the end of the day. What could he lose? Since it has to happen at the end of the night, I’m thinking all I have to take away is his TV that he watches while falling asleep after a bath. That actually might work. I know he would get super pissed if he couldn’t watch Wow Wow Wubzy after bath time.
The last thing I’m thinking is hanging a little baggie on the board. At the end of the day he can cash his .05 tokens in for real change. Then we can sit there and count them all out into the bag and on Friday he can change them in for paper money. I think he would like watching his baggy fill up with money, plus counting money will make it fun but also teach him the value of money, earning and spending.
misguidedmommy.com 
What a fabulous chart! I can’t wait to see YOUR finished product!
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Oh, Wow! That is so detailed! I attended Open House at the school tonight and they had this attitude board thing with green, yellow and red pieces of paper. If you ended the day on a Green it meant you were doing good all day and could get a sticker or something similiar. Yellow, you had a bit of trouble and a note was sent home to parents. Red, you had a lot of trouble and, again, note was sent home to parents.
I was wondering if there was some way I could make this work at home. BUT, I like your/her idea much better!
Hmmm… taking away the TV at night would be a good thing here too. My problem would be taking it away from one child and not the other. How would I do that since they share rooms?
Oooo! What about snacks?!? We do an evening/before bed snack. Maybe that could be something that is taken away for bad behavior.
I love the idea of having a little baggie and being able to count the money and watch it grow. I would love to see your finished project! I may have to make one myself. 😉
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One word for you: STICKERS. Seriously.
I taught first grade for a year and most kids still struggled to get the difference between a nickel and a quarter. He’s still too little to get the value of money. His brain just isn’t developmentally ready for that abstract of a concept. In a year or two, I’d switch it to a combo of stickers and $$ and then by mid-first grade I’d switch to the “earning money idea”
For doing all of his daily chores, he gets a sticker or a sticker for each one he does. (To start with? I’d do a sticker for each one he does. It’s always easier to decrease the # of stickers he gets in a day once he understands the reward bit). He also gets a sticker for extra chores and doing the positive behaviors you catch him doing. Also, 3 smiley faces = 3 stickers at the end of the day. 2 smiley faces = 2 stickers. So you still have something to take away.
Create a sticker chart and after so many stickers, he gets a “prize” from the dollar store, extra time to play in the bathtub, the ability to skip a chore, he gets to pick what to wear the next day, stay up an extra 10 minutes, etc. You don’t have to spend $$ on him at all if you don’t want to.
Trust me, preschoolers love stickers. Go to the dollar store/Walmart and buy the cheap smiley face type ones since you could be handing out a lot of stickers. If you want the big ones, I’d only give them out when he earns his prize for the prize square.
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