Finger painting

We have a behavior system in our house that has been in place for several years. It works really well for us. It has gone through a few adjustments, but I think it will serve us for a few more years to come (I hope).

Each child has a cup of 10 marbles (the flat kind that don't roll away) of one color. Daniel is dark blue, Nathan is green, Leah is yellow and Rebekah is red.They can earn marbles or lose them. Once they've earned all 10 marbles, there are different rewards they can pick from - electric train, Hot Wheels toy, glitter paint, finger paint, a dollar toward a book order, 30 min on the LeapFrog games, etc. Then they put the marbles back and start over.

We recently added Joseph to the system. He is light blue. Last week, Joseph earned his 10th marble. He first chose the train, but changed his mind about 10 minutes into it. Normally, it's not permitted to choose more than one activity, but I didn't want to try to explain it to a tantrum-prone 2-year-old. He chose the finger paints.

He really enjoyed himself.



And when he wanted to do a THIRD thing, I put my foot down. There are only so many things I want to clean up in one afternoon!

This afternoon, Joseph was running around the living room cleaning up things so he could earn marbles. My living room looks much nicer now!