Thursday, January 24, 2013

Held For Ransom

There's this great little pin on pinterest, that unfortunately I don't have, about a toy ransom box.  I believe the purpose was to teach kids to pick up their toys, or Momma would take them away until they did chores to earn them back.

Well, I have my own little version of this:



My poem says:
TOY RANSOM BOX
You didn't listen
So Momma took it away
Now you have to do a chore
Before it can play!
 
 
We were having distraction issues here in the Curly household.  I'd ask the kids to get shoes, 15 minutes later they were still shoeless playing with some toy they had found along the way.  Or it would take 30 minutes to put on jammies.  Those are just the easy examples.
 
My box is half blue, half pink.  One side holds boy chores that are specific to their room.  The other side holds girl chores specific to Curly Girl's room.  Both sides have household chores like "Put away dishes" "straighten bookshelf" etc.
 
The whole point is to teach focus and follow-through.  Each child has had to use it in the past few days.  My bookshelves look great (the kids section of them, I don't expect them to straighten my books) and Curly Boy's room has no dirty clothes on the floor right now!
 
It is definitely difficult for them - Curly Boy lost a toy while paying ransom for a toy due to distraction.  But it has cut down on repition and yelling and frustration.  I think it will stick around for awhile.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! I hope it helps.

Mom