The House Fairy Good Behavior Point Program

This program was created to encourage your children to work toward larger rewards like tricycles, bicycles, musical instruments, and more expensive toys.   The Good Behavior Points are like money and can be left instead of a small reward or surprise when the House Fairy makes an inspection.   There are denominations of one, five, ten, and twenty points.  Follow the simple steps below for kicking off the Good Behavior Point Program with your children.

Step One

Print out the Good Behavior Tickets in all denominations, cute them out, and keey them out of reach of your children because the idea is the House Fairy leaves them.   (You could tell your children the House Fairy left some for you to carry in your purse to give when they behave well in public.)

Print the Good Behavior Point Chart and the House Fairy Letter eplaining the program to your children.  You can write you own letter from the House Fairy if you wish and just use this letter as a guide.

Step Two

Decide what the value of a Good Behavior Ticket is.  It's arbitrary, but I suggest valuing the Good Behavior Ticket with a ONE on it at ten cents.  The Good Behavior Ticket with a FIVE on it would be worth 50 cents, the one with a TEN on it would be worth a dollar, and the one with the TWENTY would be worth two dollars.   Children will like collecting the tickets knowing that they'll be going toward their desired goal.   They'll also get a sense of what "saving" is all about.

Along with the letter from the House Fairy explaining the program, you could leave a catalog from your children's favorite stores or you and your children could look for that special something on the Internet instead of using a catalog.   It's important to get a picture of the item printed out as a constant reminder to your children of their goal.  

Let your children cut out the printed picture of the desired item and glue or tape it onto an envelope that will subsequently hold the earned Good Behavior Points.  Decide how many Good Behavior Points your children will need to earn for the items they have chosen and write that figure on the envelope.  (A suggestion:  the dollow value of the item can be used as a guide.  For example, if a video game costs $60, a child might have to earn 300 Good Behavior Points which equals $30, and you match the other half.)

Step Three

You could look over the Jobs for Kids list in in the Mom's Toolbox and assign a Good Behavior Point value to each job in your children's age category.   Add your own jobs to the list and post so your children can see how many points they can earn for various jobs.    The House Fairy could give out Good Behavior Points for more than just work around the house.

• Say your children volunteer to do a job without being told, they could recieve double points.
• When your children get a compliment: "Jacob had such nice manners when he answered the phone," could be worth 30 Good Behavior Points.
• When your children are caught sharing, it could be worth 20 Good Behavior Points.
• The House Fairy could give Good Behavior Points for grades at school: An A could be worth 100 Good Behavior Points, a B 50, and a C 25 (just suggestions).
• The House Fairy could dole out Good Behavior Points for qualities your child expresses like courage, unselfishness, kindness, creativity, love, patience, being a good listener, minding (the first time), thoughtfullness, etc.
• You can also run "specials".  All nasty jobs like cleaning up dog doo in the yard or changing the kitty litter earn triple point value today.

Each time the House Fairy makes a visit, she'll check the chart to see how many points your children have earned since her last visit and she'll leave the appropriate amount of Good Behavior Points.

Example of a House Fairy Good Behavior Chart

Good Behavior Chart For: Gracie