So week one is finished and here is what we have learned. Eliana completely gets time management. She is really good at figuring out how many tickets she has and how long she has to watch TV or play a game. The boys don't understand at all, which is to be expected at their age. Josiah very closely watches his sister and only used tickets when she used tickets. Jeremiah would have played for 5 hours straight on Monday if we had let him.
The two big problems we encountered were:
#1 - What to do with the boys if they didn't want to watch what Eliana was watching. Since we only have the TV in the living room if it is on everyone is watching it. Eliana can easily play in her room if the boys wanted to use tickets and she didn't. We can not leave the boys in a room with a closed door for that length of time. Still trying to figure out how to fix that.
#2 - Saturday morning cartoons! Eliana had 2 hours left of tickets and wanted to use them on Saturday morning. The twins only had an hour left. Rather than listening to fights about turning the TV off after an hour and Eliana being able to do something else we just let them all watch for 2 hours. Next week we will continually remind them if they want to watch TV Saturday morning they need to save the tickets for that.
One thing we will be introducing this week is the chance to earn extra tickets. We already have an extra chore jar so we will be adding extra things to do around the house. Each chore will earn a certain number of Tech tickets.
In general this has helped with the constant "Can I play with my leapster?" we have heard since Christmas. It also lets us know exactly how much TV the kids are watching. It has made it easier not to just cave and put in a movie when we are having a rough day. I think this is a plan we will continue to use for awhile.
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