The Quarter Game

I look forward to lazy summers each year. Especially now that the kids are school or near school age. I enjoy the somewhat slower pace.

However, I do NOT look forward to doing my bi-weekly grocery shopping with 3 kids. Trying to keep all three calm, cool, and collected is sometimes an exhausting job. Oh, okay...is almost always an exhausting job!

Yesterday I was refreshing my mind on some good tips from a favorite parenting book called Creative Correction. You can read my thoughts on this book HERE. And as I read I came across the idea for The Quarter Game. You've been listening to me twitter about it, too, in the last few hours. So let me share what it is all about...

First you give each child a quarter. The goal is for them to hold onto it the whole time through the store and not touch other things and not lose the quarter either. If they make it through and still have it after you pay and are on your way to leave, they get to use to buy candy or a trinket from those 25 cent machines by the doors.

However, in the case that they lose it...like Little Miss Emily here...they have to wait for the next shopping trip to try again. You can lose the quarter by bad behavior, touching things, or simply dropping it and not being able to find it. Emily lost hers today by simply dropping it and then not finding it.

Abby managed to keep hers the whole time and bought a big orange gum ball before leaving. This little game created excitement about shopping and helped keep things a bit more cool, calm, and collected!

So there you have it! An easy "game" that just might help you.