Ticket Time

In our family, we have gone through many different chore incentives and charts throughout the years.  Last year I made a fridge-side chore chart that works pretty good.  (I had Savannah take pictures of the chart)  Each morning, the girls see what chores are on their chart and when they do them they can move them to the “done” side. 

So this worked pretty good, but we noticed that the “newness” wore off after a while, and it became a constant “nagging from mom” to get certain chores done.  Enter= my brilliant other half.  One day after talking to our oldest about an incentive program she had at school, Jason went shopping and came home with a great big roll of TICKETS.  He then explained to our family how our new incentive program would work. 

Each chore that is done on the chore chart earns 1 ticket that they put in their envelope.  They HAVE to do all of the chores on their chart, but once those are done, they are free to ask mom to do extra chores.  Then we created the “Ticket Prize List”.  They can now choose their own prize and save up their tickets for that prize.  We had a lot of fun coming up with prizes together, focusing mostly on things that would involve us WITH our kids.  Some are free and cheap, and others are a little more costly, but they are all exciting things we know our kids love.  We made some really easy ones geared more towards Lily, so she doesn’t get discouraged.  Then our big prizes that they have to be pretty awesomely good to get to!

The girls have really loved this new incentive program at our house.  All three have had opportunities to redeem their tickets.  Lily first chose a backrub from daddy, and has since been able to skip one nap and earn an extra treat!

Michaela chose 30 minutes on mom’s ipad and is saving up for a big one next.

And Savannah worked super hard and saved and saved and saved so she could get the very most expensive item=a trip to Nickel Cade!

Look how proud she is with her 100 tickets!!!

It has been fun for our whole family!  The kids get excited for what they are “saving for next”, and mom and dad get excited for much better helpers, a clean house, and some fun quality time with our kids! 

We have even decided to offer occasional “sales”.  Since they have all been really great, we announced recently that the entire month of March will be 1/2 off tickets!!!  They went crazy over that, but then daddy also told them that we will have occasional “double ticket days” where they can earn double tickets for all chores done that day.  They went really crazy over that one! 

While every single chore does not always get done, it’s safe to say that we all have a much better attitude about them now!