Pirates and Chores

On the days that Korey and Hunter are together all day they try to make something fun.  On this day in particular they made pirate hats.

One afternoon I was in the grocery store with Hunter and we happened upon the toy aisle although I didn't realize it.  Hunter started yelling out for a yellow toy and when I finally saw what he wanted it was a $6 toy.  Now this is not that much money but it wasn't on my "list", I was in a different store so everything was backwards, and the store was crowded.  I was ready to go and did not feel like spending the money on this toy.  So I tried to compromise with Hunter by letting him get a $1 Hot Wheels car.  Well he was still complaining about the yellow toy after we walked away so I made the hard decision not to let him have any toy "just because."  I told him we would go home and talk to his daddy about it because it was time the boy started earning his toys.

So Korey drew up a chore chart for Hunter.  Sorry it's sideways but the chores are laundry (I hand him the wet clothes and he puts them in the dryer), coffee (he gets it out of the freezer), trash, behavior in general, and dinner time (not asking to get down before we are done).  These are all things that we already had him helping with around the house so we told him that he could get stickers whenever we saw him doing these chores and then he could get his yellow toy.  He was excited! He understands that when you go the store and get something you have to "pay for it." So we told him that when he got enough stickers he could use them to pay for his yellow toy.

And...Hunter earned enough stickers to go and get the yellow toy!  Although we didn't have a set numb he had to get but we waited until Daddy got back from Africa so we could all go together.

Smart kid that he is picked out the multipack of Hot Wheels so he could have many cars to play with.

We laughed at how he picked out the pack with the camper van and the truck carrying the boat.

He lined them up on the windowsill so he could play.

We've started a new chore chart.  Don't know what his prize will be for this second round but we like this method.  The other night we finished dinner without commotion and Hunter wanted a sticker but I told him no because he had been rude to me before dinner.  Well, he immediately apologized when he realized he wasn't getting the sticker (which we still didn't give him).  This boy has attitude some days so we have to keep that in check!