The Marble Jar

Welcome, marble jar, to my bag of parenting tricks! Ove the last few months, The Potterer (my husband) and myself have been talking about pocket money, bribes incentives, rewards, household jobs and responsibilities.

Our view is that there are some jobs that we all just do because that's what you do in a family. If I get home with a boot full of groceries, The Potterer (TP) helps me to carry them upstairs. If TP is changing the sheets on the beds, I will help him do the corners. They are nobodys jobs, because they are everybodys jobs and I want T to grow up knowing that we help each other out, for no other reason than we are family and that's what you do.

So, knowing that we have a few years up our sleeves before we really have to think about pocket money we haven't 'gone there' yet.

And as great as praise and instrinsic motivation is great for kids, we found that there were a million few things that T-Diggity needed a little extra help to do. Like anything that I asked him to do the first 12 twelve times before I resorted to using my Teacher Voice.

A quick trip to the $2 shop and The Marble Jar was born. Notice the capitalisation? That's because this thing is revered in our house. By all of us.

At the moment he gets a marble in the jar inconsistantly- it might be when he does something without being asked- unloading the fruit from the grocery bags into the fruit bowl, or wiping down the table after dinner or it's for doing things the first time he is asked- like getting his shoes on before we go out. He hasn't come to expect a marble for anything, he hasn't been asking whether he gets a marble before he does the job but the look on his face when we say "Well done! Let's go get a marble!" is just priceless.

The plan is that when the marble jar is full, he can choose a treat. Whether it is an extra trip to the library, or the lagoon, going to see a movie or choosing a toy or book at the shops. A little savings plan you might say... At the moment though, he doesn't even care about the end result- getting a marble is thrill enough.

What's the latest trick in your arsenal? Do you do pocket money? Are you for or against rewards?
 

Discovering shadows

My clever boy has just discovered his Dad's new phone, and that you can use it as a torch. Imainge his surprise and delight when he realised that not only did it shine a light, but that he could create indoor shadows using it!

At first he had to play around a bit- he kept turning around to show us and the shadow would dissapear, but eventually he realised that by shining the light towards the wall it would throw the shadow and we could see it.

His next discovery was that as he moved his hand away from the wall the shadow grew! He spent a fair bit of time explaining to me that this was called his 'Monster Arm' and chasing me with it. I can't wait for him to see what kinds of shapes you can make...

The Treasure Box

The Challenge- 6 padlocks, 18 keys.

Each padlock can be opened by 3 of the keys.

Locks and keys. Treasures to little children, so when I pulled these babies out from under the sink (where they have lived since I stopped teaching) T almost drooled. He couldn't wait to get his hands on these babies.

He started with no method, just picking up random keys and trying them in each padlock. Very quickly he got the first 3 open. Then he got stuck. He wasn't happy about it.

A little bit of encouragement helped him decide to give it another go. I gently asked him which keys didn't work in that lock. He looked at me in disgust and said dramatically "None of them work!" (He had possibly tried three) Isuggested that if they didn't fit, we put them in a pile. Once he had a method it was on like donkey kong. He decided the pile for the keys that didn't fit was on the floor *snicker, snicker* (He has his Mum's temper)

And then a win!

A sweeter victory than any of the other keys, he had to work for this one. But the success was enough to get him through the rest.

My beautiful boy. Such an easy way to learn to deal with frustration.