Reward Board: Restore Sanity Part 2

Homemade Scratch-Off Paint.  Wow.  I saw this ingenious idea online here and thought it looked like so much fun!  I mean, don’t people buy lottery tickets just to have the fun of scratching them off?!  The original blog I saw it on used it to cover chores that her child could do to earn extra money, but I decided that it was the perfect setup to use for the kids’ chore rewards.

I talked everything over with Nathan, and we thought of a few rewards the kids could “earn” by doing all their chores for a whole week (i.e., the “tickle trunk” where they can pick one toy/coloring book/whatever I buy and put in).  We had tried the traditional allowance thing last year, but found it cost too much!  😛  Then I sat the kids down and asked what they wanted for rewards, mentioning a few that we had thought of.  It was so cute to see what they requested – alone time with Mommy or Daddy, game night, chips and soda…they’re obviously easy-to-please kids.  Here is the chart I came up with for one of the kids, using 8 rewards twice to fill 16 boxes.  I figure that should cover 4 months!

Reward Board

I made four of them (for 4 kids), mixing up the rewards so they can’t “plan” which one they will get.  I had tested the recipe on several types of paper, and found cardstock covered with contact paper gave the best results for scratching, so that’s what I did.  We might even be able to reuse them!  😉 I’m beginning to love contact paper….hmmmn….

Next came the fun part.  I covered over the rewards with a mixture of metallic paint (I didn’t have acrylic so I used “Delta Creative Air-Dry PermEnamel Accent Liner Gold”) and dish soap at a 2:1 ratio.  Then of course let them dry.  I did it myself, so I didn’t use tape as guidelines (as per the original) but you could certainly do that and have the kidlings paint their own.  I didn’t want mine to see the in-process rewards, as at least one of them would memorize the locations of his favorite rewards!  😛  Here’s a picture:

It was a bit of work, so I wouldn’t do it for, say, a weekly chore chart.  But the kids are SUPER excited!!!  😀