Basically, Nathan will start the day with 10 dinosaurs. If there's a problem, we will X out one of the dinosaurs. At the bottom, the rewards are shown. I decided to do it this way (lose dinosaurs rather than earn one) because he is still a little too young for the concept of "DON'T have a tantrum and you will GET something." Better to say "hold it together, or you will lose a dinosaur for today!"
Depending on how many dinos he ends up with, he can earn videos (watching a youtube video of crocodiles, volcanoes, whatever) and he can earn tokens, which we will probably have to use pirate money for. From there, it's a straightforward token economy system. Once a week, he will get to go shopping in our "store" for prizes. I like that it also teaches the value of money and saving vs. spending. Also, using the token system will allow us to throw in unexpected "bonus tokens" when he's having a really good day.
Somehow, in researching reward systems I ended up down the Pinterest rabbit hole and so also found and then made a few cool daily schedule placemats. I'm hoping that these reminders will keep both Nathan in some sense of structure and me on top of my mental "to-do" list for us for the day. I EVEN thought (yes, I know this is possibly a bit over the top) that I could eventually, once I start school, prewrite the placemats to make each day's routine ready to go in front of us.
Lastly, I thought I would make one of these seemingly handy gadgets.
So here's what I ended up with:
Reward Chart:
Placemats:
Prizes:
A lot of these are things I'd already planned to give him, but was just saving for a rainy day. Is that wrong, do you think? A few, admittedly, are Christmas presents that I had saved because we were just on present overload.
Report coming next week on whether this System works...
I never did a post for the reward chart that I made for Gavin for potty training but I created one and it worked. I think having the visual really helps them. Nick came up with the system and I thought it would be too complicated for Gavin to understand-- I underestimated Gavin. Each day when Nick came home, I would have Gavin show Nick his stars/stickers or the lack of and we'd talk about it. He was very proud when his stars were full.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, I also created a laminated schedule, because I needed a reminder of the routine and activities for each day and it also worked well for Gavin. looking forward to the report next week.
Ha, well as always the boys are just alike and going through the same things at the same time. Glad to hear it's working. So far it's working here too, he's all about not losing his dinosaurs. I'm going to give him one extra piece of pirate money for taking a nap, too. Crazy that it works better with our preschoolers than it did with some adults, isn't it?
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