Well, this is our second official week of paying “allowance” to the kids.  Here’s what their checklist looks like at the end of the week:

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Success for Trevor- once again he completed 100%.  He really makes sure he gets his stuff done and I’m loving it.

Riley missed three this week, so she memorized a poem to earn back one checkmark.  Missing 3 would have meant no allowance, whereas missing 2 means she can have a quarter of her allowance.

She chose a poem from the Shel Silverstein book, “A Light in the Attic”

Brooke missed 10 this week.  She had missed three by Wednesday morning, once it was too late for her to make her bed and brush her teeth before school.  Her brother pointed out that now she would have to “pay”.  Her reply was, “I don’t care, I have lots of money, I don’t need any more”.   Hmmmm.  This isn’t working.  Jim and I had to figure out some sort of motivator for her.
We’ve noticed that what she really loves right now is our tablet.  So for this next week her allowance chart is to earn “tablet time”.  If she wants to use the tablet, she has to have all her boxes checked off by the end of the day in order to use it the following day.  If she’s missing even one check, she doesn’t get to use it the next day.  And we’ll see how that plays out.  We also added in a “weekend motivator”.  If she’s missing 3 or more checks throughout the week, she does not get to use the tablet on Saturday or Sunday.

The only problem with losing tablet time is that she’s been using the Nook app to read the “Hunger Games”!  Oopsie!  She also uses it to play some math and ‘telling time’ games as part of her “practice” time.  I’m sure we can borrow Riley’s Nook for a while.

On Sunday night we handed out the allowance, the kids deposited their 30% into savings (we have them do the math even).  And we printed out our new chart for the week.

Trevor and Riley still have nightly kitchen duty, Brooke still has unloading the dishwasher duty.  Other chores like cleaning the table and chairs, cleaning the booster seats, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, picking up dog poop, and cleaning the bathrooms have been assigned on various dates.

Once again- stay tuned!