Happy & Muddy Trails

I had a wonderful conversation with two purposeful moms this morning at Panera, and I was trying to explain some of the systems that are part of "Camp Connelly."  Roll your eyes at me now, go on.  But our little camping theme is a lot of fun for the kids (and us!), and we don't mind being a little goofy if it builds up our family.

So this, here, is a new behavior chart I've made primarily for Gryffy.  He's still too young to understand how Lorelei's badges and tokens work, but he sees her earning money and sometimes wants to buy things when she does, so we had to come up with something very simple, hence my idea for Happy & Muddy Trails.

 The kids start on orange every morning (Chivalry Copper, the same color as our entry!), and when they're caught taking initiative, being responsible members of our family, or doing good, they move one space toward the Happy Trails (green). When they misbehave, they move in the other direction, toward the Muddy Trails.  Whichever flag Gryffy is under at the end of the day = the number of tokens he earns, and he has to save a specific number of tokens before he gets a small reward.  Note: we do not remove tokens that he's already earned, even if he's deep in the mud--he gets a fresh start each day.
Lorelei thought it would be fun to hike the Happy Trails too, so we added this as her last badge (she earns a badge for being anywhere in the green by the end of the day) in lieu of just getting an extra badge for completing all the other badges, as we did before.  We also made a scout girl with a sash to display Lorelei's badges on the fridge (more about the badges HERE, though we've modified a bit already--we'll continue to add more responsibilities as the kids grow older).

 This is now where the badges go--on Lorelei's sash.

 The number of badges at the end of the day (up to five) equals the number of tokens earned.  Tokens are worth 20 cents each, counted by the banker on Saturdays and split three ways (Spend, Save (a 401-Car Plan matched by us), and Share--thanks for the suggestion of these categories, Grandma Barb).  This is such a wonderful system for our family: Lorelei practices her violin in the mornings, makes her bed, does her chores, and takes bedtime (fairly) seriously (not so much tonight, but I'm watching The Holiday and blogging downstairs since Mark's at a gig, and it's the weekend, so I'm being a bit lax).