On the weekends we like to try to go on out little adventures.
Typically we go out to breakfast on Saturday and then usually go to the museums, or out shopping or different events that are happening in our community.
Sometimes when we go out, Lily gets a case of the gimmies at the store.
She wants this toy and that DVD, etc. When we say no she just like every other three year old and is upset.
So after much deliberation, we decided to come up with a way that Lily could do different things to earn some money to purchase a special toy on the weekend.
Now before I get into the logistics of how this all works, I know that this could cause some controversy.
A lot of people are against children doing chores and think that they should be focusing on just their childhood and spending their time playing.
But, for our Lily, she loves to have little jobs to do. She loves to take her little Melissa & Doug cleaning set and pretend that she is cleaning. She would often help us by putting down the cats’ food and also put her clothes in the hamper.
So, it seemed for her, that giving her rewards based on helping around the house would make sense and it would also help her understand that “money” doesn’t grow on trees.
We will still buy her treats and little surprises, but now she feels like she is a real big girl when she picks out her special toy and uses her own money to pay for it.
But, this has to be based on your own child. Each child is different and this might not work for your child. You need to do what you feel is best.
Now, back to the logistics.
We looked around and decided to find her a piggy bank that couldn’t break because she would want to play with it.
We found this really cute Walt Disney World bank on Ebay that we picked up for a good deal.
Instead of doing actually money we came up with the idea to use play coins.
Since it was near St. Patrick’s day I was able to find packages of green and gold plastic coins that were big enough to not get lost but also fit through the slot of the bank.
We decided that the green coins would be $.50 and the gold ones would be $1.
She could get green coins for doing simple tasks like put the cat bowls down for meal times, putting her dirty clothes in the hamper and setting her table area for dinner.
The gold coins would be reserved for bigger jobs like making her bed, cleaning up the mess she makes from all of her toys and helping to fold simple laundry like socks and washcloths.
So far, it has been going well. She has been loving picking out her own stuff and using her own money to purchase her toys.
However, if she loses interest in doing it, we will stop doing it.
Mousekatots 