Belinda Lindhardt

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Reward Chart Illustrations



The past few weeks i gave myself a little project, the project combined my two loves doing art and doing something for my kids :)

Getting jobs done and managing behaviour has become a bit of an issue in my household. I have been at my wits end and so in order to have a positive way of dealing with it all i thought i would do up a reward chart. We have done reward charts in the past using stickers as the rewards but i have found the charts seem to have a limited lifespan. The kids get tired with looking at the thing again and again that never changes and its hard to keep track of what stickers they have received for each day / week. My youngest would love to pull all of the stickers off and basically when it comes down to it the charts haven't been very successful.

So rather than totally abandoning the chart idea i thought maybe if i devised something which was a bit different it might just work. My oldest one being 4, I have been thinking about next year getting him ready for school and i wanted a chart which recognized that he actually was required to do specific things each day rather than just random acts he gets rewards for which would also get him in the routine of getting jobs done. I also wanted a way that we can essentially start with a "new" chart each week, rather than seem the same tatty thing with old stickers day in day out.
I noticed at kindy they had a chart for the weather where they had little velcro stickers on the backs of laminated paper which served as the "stickers" and allowed you to reuse them again and again. i thought what a fabulous idea, so here is the little illustration project i have created.

Kids Reward Chart
On the chart I have 7 days of the week (getting him used to seeing the names of the week) i have his picture and his name (so you could have a different chart for different kids), and then i have tasks that he must do each day. If he does a task well or efficently (which is my issue everything takes a loooonnngg slooooow nagging processs) he gets a star. At the end of the day / week we can look at how many stars he has and if he has a certain number of stars then he gets a reward be that taken to a movie or the park or choosing what he wants for dinner or playing with a friend. Then at the end of the week we take all the stars off and start again. This way i am hoping he will recognise that he is accountable for his actions and more importantly he gets rewarded for the good things he does and it will hopefully motivate him to get it done. I have based the illustratons on things i am struggling with him to do which is:

Eat Breakfast
Get Dressed
Brush Teeth
Brush Hair
Put Toys Away
Go to Bed

I also have reading / learning section that he can get an extra star for an extra reward if he does good learning / reading.

I am going to do another one for my other son who is 2. He will not have as many tasks as he is younger. His chart will include lots of toilet pictures as i am training to toliet train him at the moment.

So there you go, what do you think ? I am thinking other mums would like to have something like this? Maybe i should package it and have it for download? its a great craft activity for mum but also can get the kids involved. You can colour it in, get them to help sticking the stickers. :)

Max keep interrupting me as i was doing the illustrations but his reaction was priceless when i actually showed him the finished chart. All he said was "WOW, Wow mum thats great. "

3 comments:

Rose Welty said...

Belinda!

You are a stellar mom and tremendous artist. This is fabulous.

Well done.

Anonymous said...

That is amazing!! Thanks for the inspiration - I will definitely be creating one!!!!!

Serena Lewis said...

I had a similar problem with the other type of reward charts. When Aaron was younger, he would throw a tantrum at the end of the day if he didn't get a reward sticker even though he hadn't done the task. lol

Great idea, Belinda!