I have seen a lot of wonderful memes expressing the sheer chaos at homes whilst kids are refined to their homes. Whilst a lot of them are really funny, the serious underlying tone is not so funny, so I decided to share this awesome and creative system to help some mums create a fun environment, whilst devising a systematic approach to things that might be driving some mums mad at the moment.
I started this a few weeks ago at home and it seems to be working shockingly well. It is surprising how much children like routine, the hard part is creating and adapting to something new but I found this to be quite simple and exciting for them (my girls are 3 and 4 years old). The great thing is that you can also adjust the rules (how to earn and reward) as you see fit, because you can customise it to completely suit your family.
How it works is that you list several ways for your kids to earn “fake” money, they in return need to save the money to buy things from the pantry or fun things that should be scarce. For example, Khloe needed to do 10 mins of exercise ($10) and clean her room ($15) in order to get biscuits which were $25.
I have gone from nagging Khloe to clean her room, to now watching her do it without asking. She will run up to me after and say “mum, can I have $15 fairy dollars because I cleaned my room?”. I know what you’re thinking, “no, way”, I must admit, I didn’t think it would work that well either. But it has for us!
I originally explained this is the same reason why mummy and daddy work. Now when they can’t afford a treat in the pantry, mummy and daddy aren’t evil, they realise they didn’t earn enough “fairy money” to buy it.
Off course we are lenient sometimes and don’t recommend adding things like breakfast as a reward. It is important to make it fun and as fair as possible, for example, don’t make a small treat extremely hard to earn.
Below is how we have incorporated it in the kitchen with magnets and little magnetic pouches on the fridge (there are heaps of magnetic pouches you can find for very cheap prices but if you like this set up – I bought these from Office Works for about $4: https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/j-burrows-magnetic-pocket-120-x-165mm-blue-ottompktbe).
It is incredible how well it works; so far, I have seen it help with:
- Learning about working for what you want
- Understanding the concept of money
- Understanding restriction and discipline, you can’t just walk up to the pantry and get whatever, whenever you want
- Learning that rewards are treats
- Forming good habits around the chores listed
- Encouraging good behaviour
- Brings out a competitive side which forces good behaviour for results
- learning how to add and subtract and taking more interest in numbers
- Teaching them responsibility and making them feel “like big people”
It doesn’t have to look as pretty as this template; you can even hand write it if you don’t have access to a printer and make a fun activity out of making the fake money with your kids. There are many ways you can alter this template around the concept to fit into your home and outcomes.
Blank templates as follows (which I made in word and can be easily recreated):
Feel free to direct message us on social media or send us an email to service@kokoadora.com if you would like a word or PDF workable and printable template of this fun exercise.
I hope this helps bring some order in homes amongst these crazy times.
Stay safe.
Socially distant,
Bernadette Habkouk
Owner of
KoKo Adora – displaying love in unity
Transpiring a mothers love through matching mother and daughter clothing
