mommy's store

I found this idea here about a Mommy Store and decided to give it a try. It's a fun system for rewarding good behavior in your children. When I read about it I thought Thomas and Elle would love it and I was right!

The way we are doing the Mommy Store is that I have made many different coupons for the kids to purchase with Mommy money that they have earned throughout the week. Mommy money is white and red poker chips. They earn a white chip every time they remember to do their daily chores without being reminded (brushing teeth, putting dirty clothes in basket, making bed, etc.). They also can earn more white chips for good behavior, being kind to each other and for any additional work that they might be asked to do. When work is done with a bad attitude or if there is fighting and it doesn't stop after a warning then they are given a red chip. When I open up my store on Wednesday morning they have to pay me one white chip for every red chip in their jar before they can make any purchases. Today was the first day the store was open so they now realize how costly a red chip is.

Each coupon in my store is worth a different amount of chips and they can choose which ones they want to buy. I made coupons for watching movies, cartoons on Boomerang, and playing the XBox 360 because I felt like this was starting to get out of hand in our house. So now they only are going to get these privelages if they have purchased a coupon and only for the allotted time on the coupon.

Here are the coupons that each of them purchased. It was fun to watch them mull over which ones to decide on and to work together to buy coupons they could share. For instance, a coupon for 30 minutes of cartoons costs 2 chips. They figured out that they could each pay 1 chip and share the coupon and watch an episode of Tom and Jerry together.

Thomas purchased -
1 coupon for a full can of pop
2 coupons for an hour each for playing the XBox 360

Elle purchased -
1 coupon to watch a movie of her choosing (I'm sure she'll choose Barbie!)
1 coupon to play an hour of the XBox 360 (This surprised me! The game she likes to play is snowboarding.)
1 coupon for a big bubble bath in the whirlpool tub
1 coupon to pick a meal for me to make this week. She has already said that she is going to choose spaghetti. Thomas wrinkled his nose up at that one. Spaghetti is his least favorite meal! :)

Together they purchased an hour and half worth of cartoons to watch.

I have a feeling that they will be earning many more white chips this week than they did last week since they now know all of the fun things they can buy with them! I'm hoping so anyway.

The place where I read about this idea has even more fun ideas about incorporating toys into the store. She bought a Mr. Potato Head and accessories and each piece was worth X amount of chips. She also did the same with a doctor's kit. I love that idea except that my kids are older so the toys they want are harder to do that with.