If you are suffering from tantrum troubles, this easy Good Behavior Ticket and Prize Bucket system might be the perfect solution for you! Easy free printable tickets and inexpensive prizes to redeem have been having great results in our house this summer! I created this project (well, one, for my sanity) as part of this month’s crafty de-stash.
Every month, a group of bloggers challenge each other to create a new craft or project from their own stash of goodies! You must create a project primarily from your own craft supplies, with an allowance of $10 for any necessities, such as paint brushes or such. Check out some awesome creations you might be able to make from your own stash! #CraftRoomDestashChallenge
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If you’d like to join in the Craft Room De-Stash Challenge, you can request to join our Facebook group here!
My kids have been BONKERS this summer – the whining, the tantrums, the fighting. . . ugh!! A friend of mine has a part time nanny for her brood, and apparently the nanny instituted a “good behavior” system to keep tantrums at bay. I was inspired to create my own good behavior ticket system to try out at home!
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For this project, you will need:
- three glass mason jars, one larger than the other two
- acrylic paint, safe for glass
- card stock in color of choice
- printer
- scissors or paper trimmer
- twine
- wooden tags
- bucket or box
- black Sharpie
Step One : Gather Your Supplies
I was fortunate in that this project only cost me for the prizes I filled my bucket with – technically not part of the challenge at all! 🙂 I have an abundance of mason jars stashed away, in all sizes. I simply grabbed two of comparable size and one larger one to hold the good behavior tickets for distribution.
Another stash (hoard?) in my supply is my various wooden cutouts. I have a knack for grabbing sale items or things with all intentions of a project, then – POOF! – idea is gone and I’m left with an ever growing stash of supplies. Part of the reason I created this challenge was due to that problem! So I grabbed two wooden tags to label my jars with, rather than simply going with color coding.
I still have a fairly embarrasingly large collection of acrylic paints, so I grabbed one of each of my boys’ favorite colors, and white for the good behavior ticket jar. Time to paint!
Step Two: Paint Your Jars and Tags
I forgot to count, but I believe I applied about three coats each to the jars, letting each coat dry completely in between. The Gloss Enamel from Decoart Americana had the best coverage, I will admit. You can bake the jars to secure the paint, or simply give them a 21 day or so curing window before washing or handling much.
Step Three: Create, Print, and Cut Out Your Good Behavior Tickets
Now, you are perfectly welcome to use my layout for your Good Behavior Tickets if you like, but in case you’d like to design your own, here is how I created mine. I of course went straight away to my beloved Picmonkey and clicked “Design”. I made my canvas color transparent. I intended to print my tickets out on colored card stock (also already in my stash), but if you are going for white, then a white canvas color will work just as well.
Picmonkey has a great selection of themes and overlays, many of which I’ve previously played around with and so become familiar. I went to the School theme and the Up Notes to find my tickets, using the Notebook Labels to frame my tickets.
Once I’d created four separate ticket styles, saving each individually to my computer, I closed out of Design and opened up the Collage feature on Picmonkey.
Seeing as I only had four designs, I chose the Square Deal collage, adding one design per square.
Once my collage was saved, I selected it to print multiple copies at the wallet sized image. You may need to adjust your “Fit to Print” depending on your computer. Then just print a few sheets and trim away with scissors or paper trimmer! Right click on the above image and “Save As” for your own printable tickets!
In our system, you receive “check marks” for misbehaving each day. If you have three at the end of the day, you don’t get a ticket. You can only earn one ticket per day, and items in the prize bucket can only be redeemed after five tickets. For the prizes themselves, I typically snatch up clearance toys or Dollar Store goodies.
So far the system is working very well on my eldest. My three year old is a bit stubborn, so while check marks do bother him, he doesn’t seem terribly concerned by the loss of a ticket. One thing we’ll need to work on, I guess!
Now let’s see what everyone else has been up to in their #CraftRoomDestashChallenge!
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Looks like a good system! My mother used to buy two rolls of quarters for long car trips. If we asked questions like “what time is it?” or “are we there yet?”, she would take away a quarter. Whatever was left when we got to our destination we could spend on whatever we wanted! Of course, that was way before cell phones & such! 😉
I LOVE THAT IDEA!!! I almost sometimes feel like removing something they have (toy, money) is actually better than gifting. I guess it depends on how the kids respond!
I don’t have small children but if I did I would definitely do this. It is a great idea!
This is so clever & if I were a kid, I would love to “play” this game! It’s almost like the gold stars you used to get in school (back in the dark ages) for good behavior. Glad you saw results from it. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of the Destash Challenge. I enjoyed it!
Cute project! I really don’t use PicMonkey to the extent that I could. I had no idea those features were there. Thanks for showing us 🙂
Great project and what a fun way to give the kiddos incentives to behave 🙂 We did something similar when mine were little, and incentives always seem to work best. This is a great way to use your destash items as well, so colorful and fun. Thanks for hosting the challenge each month, it’s been a lot of fun every time!
This sounds like a good way to promote good behavior with kids. I will keep that in mind for when I am a mom.
This is a great idea and I love mason jar anything! I hope it continues to work. Your little guy will get it and one day be upset by the loss of a ticket. LOL! The prizes are great too. It looks so cute all put together like that. I love it.