Discipline can be a tricky thing to have to deal with when you’re raising kidlets. What works when your child is 2 almost never works when that same kid is 7. Trust me on this one! When Luke started in Kindergarten last year, his teacher had what I considered a brilliant behavior management system and now that he’s in first grade, I’ve found that a good majority of the classes at his school employ the same system, including his teacher this year. After a few of our neighborhood friends started doing a nearly identical thing in their own homes, I figured we might as well give it a shot too. It’s been magical! My kids have never been more helpful around the house with such little complaining! Want to know the secret? Keep reading to find out how we do discipline in our home.
To start off with, we have two major components to the system: the Clip Chart and the Jars. The Clip Chart is where we keep track of their behavior throughout the day and the jars keep track of how well they’re doing as a whole. I have ours posted in our kitchen and family room area where it is readily seen at all times and is easily accessible to our kids.
The Clip Chart is simply 7 different colors of card stock taped together. I have my pieces cut to around 5 inches by 6 inches so they aren’t huge, but I have friends who use an entire sheet of 8.5 x 11 card stock per color. Do what works best for your space and your family! We’ve chosen to use the same colors as the charts found in their classrooms: pink is the highest/best they can do in a day and red is the lowest/worst they can do. To get the laminated look, I covered our clip chart in clear packing tape. Easy, right? This will help protect the sides of your chart for months and years to come.
During the day, my children get to “clip up” if they’re being helpful or showcasing great behavior. If they aren’t making good choices or do something wrong, they have to “clip down.” The rewards and consequences aren’t put into effect until the next day. They have the whole day to determine how many marbles they’ll end up with or what consequence they’ll be getting for the next day.
I created a simple outline of what each of the colors represents in our home (Thank you Project Life grid card!) and placed it right above the chart. Now, there’s no guessing as to what reward/consequence each of the colors carries. Notice that there isn’t some fancy printable that goes along with this, even though I could have easily created one. I wanted to keep it clean and simple.
When it comes to consequences, choose punishments that are meaningful to your kidlets. Mine love being able to be outside with their friends so that was an obvious choice for one, while no electronics (no television, iPad, or phones) is like the end of the world to them. Since implementing this system, neither Luke or Reagan has gotten on red. Make the lower colors mean business!
Each kiddo has a clothespin with their name written on it with a permanent pen. Each day they start out on green and move up or down on the chart as their behavior dictates. They are responsible for moving their own clothespin.
Now to the jars! I’ve one jar for each kid, plus a jar just for the marbles next to where we have our Clip Chart hanging. You may have noticed on my Clip Chart sign that my kids can earn marbles for good behavior. Based upon the color they are on at the end of each day, each kid receives a certain number of corresponding marbles to place in their own jar (credit brenmie). For example, yesterday Luke ended the day on purple and Reagan ended the day on blue which meant she added 1 marble to her jar while Luke added 2 to his. When each kiddo’s jar is full, they get to pick an activity/meal that just them and Mommy and/or Daddy get to go to with them; Reagan already has McDonald’s earmarked for her first special time!
Each jar is clearly labeled with each child’s name — there’s no second guessing where you need to put your marbles! I used vinyl cut with my Cricut Explore Air® for our jars, but your could easily write your kiddo’s names with a marker or on a piece of paper that gets taped to the jar. Anything goes!
It’s amazing the drastic change in behavior for Luke and Reagan since we started this. Everything is clearly laid out to make sense to them and there’s no questioning what the rewards or punishments will be for their choices, whether it be good or bad. I feel like it’s taken a lot of steam out of the arguments and tantrums, too. I consider that a win!
Think this system might not work exactly like this for you? That’s okay! Of all of my friends that have implemented the Clip Chart, no two of us do it exactly the same and do you know why? Because no two families are exactly the same!
One friend, Tamara, has her rewards and consequences printed directly on her Clip Chart, in lieu of my list that’s above my chart. Also, hers isn’t laminated and it’s still holding up nearly a year later. Her kiddos have to collect 100 gems to choose one of the following prizes:
Another friend of mine, Geneva, uses poker chips instead of gems or marbles. Each kiddo is assigned their own color and can turn the chips they’ve earned in for the opportunity to buy a special toy, choose a snack or treat, or have a date night with a parent. Geneva only gives out the poker chips if they are on green or higher and has altered the consequences to fit her younger child who’s going through a rough tantrum patch. That’s the beauty of this system: you can customize it to your current needs!
The final example I’m going to share today comes from MaryAnn. Her colors are almost completely different from mine, but it’s colors that she chose to use. It’s okay to switch it up like that! In her home, her girls earn marbles for being above green and lose marbles when they end up below green. She also gives each of her kids an extra marble in the morning if they are completely finished with their Morning Routine Checklist before a timer goes off.
So what do you think? Does this seem like a behavior management system that could work for your family?
If you liked this post, you might also like:
How I Always Get My Kids to School On Time
How We Do Bedtime Without the Fight
This post may contain affiliate links, but all opinions and ideas are 100% my own.
Linking Here:
Tatertots & Jello * Lil’ Luna * Positively Splendid
Whipperberry * I Heart Naptime * SNAP
Pin It
I love this and am pinning this for when Ryder gets older!
These are some great tips! Thanks for sharing ~ pinning 🙂
This is a great idea Katie!
My Granddaughter’s school does something similar and it works well.
Wish I had thought of something like this when my children were young!
Thanks for sharing!
I like this system. We have tried chore charts in the past but this seems a lot more simple. I’m going to give it a try… thanks for the tips!!
I love the idea of this system. 🙂 I’m just wondering if it will work with having one child. Having more than one child I can see it would be more fun for the kiddos but my little one would probably get bored doing it by herself.
I think if you found what really motivated your daughter, I bet she’d still love it!
Thank you for sharing!! Do you happen to know what “prizes” the teachers use? I’m babysitting my nephews and niece over the summer, so your rewards wouldn’t really work for us, but maybe what the teachers do would work better…
In my son’s classroom this year, they didn’t even use prizes for the discipline. The color each student ended up on each day was sent home so it was up to the parents to praise for good behavior.
Jen my daughter’s teacher used pretend dollars that the kids could earn and at the end of the week they could choose to spend their money on different little trinket toys, snacks, or a no homework pass or things like that. If they were on anything lower than green then they would get a warning or note sent home to parents or they would lose money.
My daughter has several times mentioned that she would like me to do this program at home and thinks it would help her but I’m not convinced..she is a tough one. However I am out of ideas that work with her so it maybe worth a try.
Do you ever find that your kids are just “being helpful” or performing a “good deed” to move up on the chart…but they are not really being sincere or only doing a mediocre job…..what do you do for that? Does it count? How do you regulate what “good behavior” or “helpful” is, to move up on the chart? Any ideas would be helpful.
Good question Natalie! Because my husband and I are the ones judging what is worthy of clipping up, we tend to make sure that our kiddos are doing things to our standards (not their kid standards) before they get to clip up. I also try to avoid the “if you do this, you’ll get to clip up” method and tend to surprise them with clipping up after they’ve done great work. If they aren’t sincere, there’s no clipping up!
Do you think this would work for a 5 yr and 3 yr old? Thinking my 3 yr old might be too young but maybe not…
My five year old can do this no problem. We did have to walk her through the process for a couple of weeks, but she’s totally independent now. I think the three year old might still be a smidge too young for this, though.
Hi, I’ve just put together a makeshift version of this so we can start tomorrow. I’ve ordered some items online to do it properly but I wanted to just get started. My eldest 2 are 8.5 and just 6. I’m not sure I can work it for my 2.5 year old. Anyway, thanks. I look forward to the results!
Hi, what a clever idea! Im looking at implementing some sort of behaviour chart for my 4.5year old and I think this looks great. Im not sure if shes too young still though? I wanted to ask a few questions, You mentioned that the child starts on green and moves up or down according to her behaviour. So if she managed to get up to pink and then did something wrong she would move down 1 space to purple right? Or is it to yellow? Because I saw similar posts on pinterest with a system that resembles yours but instead of being with just colours they have super, good job, etc written on the coloured card stock and it involved moving the childs peg down more than 1 space to the bottom colours that referred to consequences. So I just wanted to clarify that this system is less complicated and you simply move the childs peg up or down one colour each time she does or doesnt do a specific task. Its the final colour she ends up on that determines her result.
Hi Renae!
I have a five year old that started this program when she was 4, so its definitely do-able. It might just take a smidge longer to teach your daughter the system. Just stick with it.
As far as the clipping up and down, you were right on. If my kids are on pink and make a poor choice, they move down to purple, not yellow. Now, if they keep making poor choices, they might make it all the way down to yellow, but they don’t jump multiple colors unless they did something really bad. I hope this helps!
I love this idea! I am going to try it with my 5 year old to see if he will stop being so naughty. I am changing the colors around, blue is his favorite color so I am going to make that the color at the top so he always wants to get to it and his least favorite colors at the bottom. I do have one question: what do you do if they move from the starting color but end up on it at the end of the day?
Hi Tara! I’ve told my kiddos that anything from green (where they begin) and higher is great, but they don’t get rewarded for ending up on the same color they started with for the day other than a “Good job!” or a high five. Does that make sense?
Hello. This is an an amazing Idea. I’m wondering how you implement this outside the home? Running errands, shopping etc. Love this idea. Thank you!!
I’m so glad that you like the idea! When we’re out in public and not near our home, I do a few key things that I think help our success. First, I make sure to explicitly let them know while we’re still in the car what I expect while we’re out. I really feel like giving them parameters before all of the tempting distractions come into play is super important in setting them up for a positive experience.
Once we’re out in the world, they get one warning in case they slip up and don’t follow a rule that I outlined before we stepped out of the car. Mistakes happen and I make sure to allow for that. If we make it all the way through our errand and they haven’t had to be given that warning, they get to clip up when we get home. If they’ve been given the warning, they stay where they are on the chart. If they have to be reminded more than once of what the rules were, they have to clip down.
I hope this helps!
If they do happen to have a horrible day and end on red, do they loose bikes, friends and electronics…or just electronics?
I tend to do all three because it takes a lot of effort to end the day on red and I really want to have my kiddos understand how poor their choices were that day.