This past week my focus was shifted to my older son who came down with chicken pox. Being confined at home, it was the perfect opportunity to get started on the learning reward tracker I have been thinking about.
Simple motivational reward tracker
Going to kindergarten next year means he has to take reading and writing seriously. It is often an arduous task getting this active toddler to sit still, let alone do some writing. I have been scratching my head over how to motivate him, especially to take an interest in learning Mandarin words. Thought I would give this reward tracker a try and it worked!
Loosely translated the title is ‘Jun Xuan’s Chinese words learning tracker’.
I drew a grid with 7 by 5 boxes. To include him in this process I let him decide what rewards he wanted for every 5 completed worksheets (or words learnt). Then he got to colour in the reward items. He got straight down to work on earning those stickers! He completed the tenth one while waiting for our doctor to certify him pox free, and was rewarded with a well deserved ice cream 🙂
4 comments
I love this! Did you have to set guidelines to the type of rewards he can choose to have? If so, how did you communicate that?
Hi Carol! I didn’t set guidelines, rather I asked him to think about what treats he enjoyed the most, then explained that treats must be earned. So he picked his favourite things as ice cream, sweets, French fries, playing on the ipad and going to the playground.
He would keep track of how many more to go before he gets something (and he doesn’t get it before he fulfils the number of stickers required). He was pretty self motivated on this!
I have three kids. The eldest child I raised using rewards and everything was fine, but when he was about 5 years old, he accumulated the amount he needed and refused to do chores. I couldn’t make him do anything else, because his already had a certain attitude to matters. Now he is 7 years old, it is impossible to force him to do household chores. I don’t know what to do. I am not ready to put pressure on him, as it affects the child’s mental health. With the second child, everything was somehow easy, he took the vacuum cleaner himself, helped clean the table and put away the toys. He repeated everything after me and I just praised him. The third child I raised using printable star reward charts. The son liked it, but the stars were constantly lost. Then we switched to the Manini app. Now the youngest child is 3 years old and we already know how to do a lot. I don’t scold him if he misses something or doesn’t want to do it.
Now I think about it and wonder how different all children are)
Yes it’s a wonder how different each child is which makes parenting so much more of a challenge. After all the different scenarios and things I have tried, I found the bottom line is make sure we show our kids love and compassion in each response. Be it lecturing them for not completing tasks or leading by example and completing tasks together with them. My older one has started to complain about chores and thus I remind him that if he helps out, we can complete work faster and spend more time on activities he enjoys.