Welcome to Mom’s Quick Tips Thursdays! Each week I will either post or have a guest post have a Mom’s Quick Tips to share with you! As a mom to 4 and another on the way life is busy. I am always looking for ways to make life easier whether it be doing something quicker, easier or thrifty!
This week I have a guest blogger; Karen with Tots and Me. She is a mom with 4 little ones at home right now, ages 7 months to 5 1/2 years old. Plus she has 3 older children, but they are out of the home now. She has struggled for years trying to find a form of discipline that works with her children. They have tried time out, spankings, taking away privileges or toys. With all this trial and error, they believe they have come up with a working discipline plan.
Here is that plan:
Here is that plan:
First, each of our three girls starts the day off with 10 pennies. We let them count them out which helps them work on their number recognition, one-to-one counting and addition skills (You have seven pennies, how many more do you need to make 10?) The girls eagerly look forward to this time of day.
After they count them out, they put them in their cups.
Hannah is the only one who is still using the number line to count out her pennies. I have to say, I have seen the benefit of using it. The older girls have a great understanding of numbers. For instance, Tabitha took out 5 pennies, knew she needed 5 more and placed them on the table. She then proceeded to count them by 2’s:
Amelia also took out pennies and laid them out. She thought she had 10, then recounted them and realized she only had 9. I asked her how many more she would need to make 10 and she told me 1.
If they have misbehaved prior to counting out their pennies in the morning they still count out 10 pennies, but then they give me the appropriate number of pennies (as shown in our chart below). This gives them a chance to practice subtraction.
The overall goal is to still have 10 pennies at the end of the day (which has yet to happen). There are several ways that the children can lose their pennies throughout the day:
As you can see, some actions are more serious than others. The “Mealtime Rules” are a little more detailed.
They can also gain pennies back by doing extra chores.
If they lose all their pennies by the end of the day they will not get a sticker on their chart (I created a morning routine chart from DLTK-Growing Together’s Customized Chore Charts).
If they have any pennies left they will get 1 sticker to place over the day of the week. If they have no pennies left they will not receive a sticker. If they have all 10 pennies left at the end of the day they will get 2 stickers or 1 sticker and a small piece of candy (i.e. spice drop or jelly bean). Having 5 stickers at the end of the week means they get to choose a small toy from the thrift shop. Unfortunately, this has only occurred 1 time so far.
This is still a work in progress that has been evolving for a few years. The behaviors that we chose may not be problems for other families. I’m hoping you will be able to find something in our system that will be of help to you if you are struggling with discipline.
Speak Your Mind