Gearing up for back to school....

A new year, a new plan... and with any luck, more blogging.  LOL   Next week we're going to kick off our new school year.  I hadn't actually planned for the school year to stop, but it did... and well, c'est la vie... but it's time to re-group.  Too much unstructured time has led to some bad habits and questionable attitudes, so we're leading up to getting back into a regular, somewhat predictable groove.

The first step was last week - I posted new room-cleaning instructions in the girls' bedrooms.  I know A can't read yet, but it doesn't hurt to have it there anyway.  I went for a measure of cuteness while at the same time I've been reminding them that it's non-negotiable.  Then I added a reminder list by the bathroom, to walk them through getting ready in the morning.

The current project is a new reward/penalty system for behavior, attitudes, chores and schoolwork.  Last year I made up a nifty system with velcro tabs, where I assigned jobs each day and they pulled off the tab when they had finished it.  Nice idea, but yeah... not so much for us.

What I've crafted now is something a little more tangible.  I want to reinforce some good things with immediate gratification, penalize other things with something that is immediately visible, and also leave room for "random positive consequence" - if you took college psych you'll know that is statistically the most effective approach to behavior modification. But that's beside the point; it's also fun.

I went to the dollar store and bought pirate's gold and some poker chips.  So now we have tokens that are white, blue, green and gold.  And a pretty box of prizes hiding on top of the fridge.  As we go through the week, the girls can earn various colored tokens for doing the things I want them to do.  And I will also reward them randomly if I see them doing something good, like sharing nicely, being particularly helpful, etc.  The white tokens can be cashed in on Saturday for prizes from the treasure chest, or for cash, thus giving them the chance to earn an allowance.  The blue ones are for TV/Computer time, and the green ones are for outings.  The gold ones are something special, they are to reward and reinforce behaviors that are God-pleasing.

For penalties, I'm applying the principle behind a blog entry I saw a while back.  She made her kids pay her back in energy if they did something that sapped hers.  I will be making them pay me back in tokens.  Very straight-forward, concrete, and immediate.

Here are my charts.  Forgive the font; the online converter I used didn't like my fancy stuff.