Reward and Smart Jars

We do chore charts in this house and it has helped my kids tremendously in doing their part to help out around the house. Lately our charts have been a second thought and I needed something new. I needed something fresh and was thankful to come across a friend's blog and she had an entire post on fun games to get your kids motivated to help out. She had this great idea about a jar with rewards in it. I decided to incorporate this reward jar with our chore charts. When they complete their chores for the day and check them off then they put a sticker on the their calendar. Then they get to pick from the Reward Jar. They get to have the reward the following day. So for our FHE this week I hid easter eggs in the living room. We sang a song about helping out and I read a message from the February 2009 FRIEND called "Two Secrets To Happiness." It talked about learning to work hard and to have self-control. We talked about how doing our chores helps everyone in the family. Then I let them find all the eggs. After finding the eggs I let them come up with some rewards they would like and I wrote them down on pieces of paper and hid them in the eggs. It was a great FHE and I'm sure they will remember this one for sure. The biggest reward for my boys is being able to play the Wii and so we put a couple of 15 min and 30 min of Wii time in there since they only get to play on Saturdays. I was so impressed by how motivated they were to get their chores done and how they aksed me if they could do more. WOW. Even Emma participates by doing small jobs for me. Everyone wins and everyone is happy.

The Reward Jar was a huge success and I just kept thinking how I could incorporate this idea to their study time. The boys don't really get that much homework from school and I hate to stand by while they could be progressing so much quicker. Although I like parts of their school I have never felt like it was as challenging as it could be. So I came up with the Smart Jars. In each of their personalized jars are things they can do to become "SMART." The boys both like math worksheets and flashcards and so there are plenty of those kinds of things in there. In Emma's jar I put things like working on ABC's and counting and singing songs. These jars are fun for the kids and also a good reminder for me to always be working with them on learning!