Rewarding Your Children

This topic has come up in our house a few times recently and it's something my husband and I have discussed.  It's arisen due to the little yellow dots that came home last week and also from a conversation I had a work.

As of now, the boys get treats sometimes, but we don't give them rewards based on things like good behavior at school or doing chores.  We don't even have a chore chart which I'm sure will surprise many of you.  To tell you the truth, I've thought about doing a chore chart, but in reality, we expect the boys to do certain things like put their clothes in the hamper when they're getting ready to take a bath, pick up their toys when we ask them to and brush their teeth.  We expect them to do these things just as we expect them to listen at school, say "please" and "thank you" and answer with "sir" or "mam."  

At 3 and 5, what real chores can they have?  They aren't big enough to wash dishes, they can't vacuum or mop yet and they're really not big enough to make their beds.  They like to help when we're cleaning whether it be dusting or cleaning the bathrooms.  They really are good helpers, too.  

As far as school goes, we expect them to do their best and to do their homework.  K.C. has homework assignments that have to be turned in each Friday and we work on those throughout the week.  It's very rare that he doesn't want or ask to do his homework, something I'm very thankful for.  We try to make learning fun, too.  He has a list of words he's required to know by the end of kindergarten and we work on those each week.  We started out with a parking spaces and last week, we made an air field (his idea).  He loves playing this "game" and I get so excited when he starts asking me to ask him certain words to read because he's ready to "land" a plane on a particular word.  He's doing really well!

At 3, Kaden doesn't have real homework, but from his school calendar, we have different letters, shapes and concepts we work with him on each week.  He is all about doing homework, too!  He gets so excited about doing his homework that it's sometimes hard to work with K.C. on his actual homework at the same time!  It's great.  I love that they love learning.

I think I got a bit off topic with those two stories (you can't tell I like to talk, can you?), but I think they show that we don't have a homework problem.  We don't really have behavior problems either.  We really are blessed that the boys are great children.

We've thought about doing an allowance for the boys and they'll get points based on different things and at the end of the week, they'll get some money based on the points they have.  We've also thought about rewarding them with a treat for different things.  We really haven't decided what (if anything) we're going to do.

I'm curious - what do you do?  Do you have a list of chores for your kids to do each week?  Do you give them rewards for good report cards and good behavior at school?  Do you give an allowance?  I'm looking forward to hearing from you!