Great idea! I wonder how do you find so creative and out of the worldish ideas…

Lovely!

This is what has worked for us. Feel free to adapt to your own family’s needs…

The program is to encourage almost any positive activity other than watching TV. While tree climbing may be fun for some kids, some kids do not think it is fun, so encouraging physical activity with points makes complete sense. Also, the hope is that it will also lead to good memories of being active and later on, the pattern continues without the reward of points.

I did a similar thing for my children. We did a combination of family trips and individual rewards for them to spend their points on. One of the favorite rewards for mine were time spent alone with the parents. For example, if my daughter earned 50 points (our points were earned slower than the author’s program) she could opt for Father-daughter or Mother-daughter time.

As far as going to the museum or zoo, I would let the children combine their point cards so that we could all take a family trip. We averaged about 2 per summer because the parent-child time was “purchased” so often. I don’t know how you would deal with differing opinions of where to go, maybe I just had children who wanted SOME kind of trip enough that they didn’t argue about the destination all that much.

As far as negative behaviors you want to stop: I would make it a negative point situation. If you offer bonus points for not doing the behavior, it would be hard to stop giving the points when the bad habit is broken. Whereas, if you take a certain amount of points each time you catch him whining. (or chewing nails or whatever other bad habit you want broken) You could even graduate on to a different bad habit. Or you could offer points for positive behaviors that you want to work on. For example, we used positive points for doing kind things for one of the siblings. They also liked to “tattle” on each others’ good deeds, which means that they were taking time to notice good behaviors from their sibling instead of focusing on the negative.

Hope my answers help some people. I don’t know if they answer for the author, just how I implemented a similar token economy in my household.

This one: https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

We’re looking forward to implementing this soon.

Some other additions we had from our brainstorm:

Make a card for a widow
Make the family a snack
Playing with bubble machine
Dance Party to music
Helping Grandma clean house
Checking cows water
Organizing a cupboard or drawer
Cleaning the bus or the car

Here’s to a great, active summer! Thanks so much for sharing your idea.

Backyard (could be an apartment or even a single room) adventure and mini treasure hunt.

First, you need to search through the play areas and list the tiny things that usually go unnoticed, such as tiny insects and animals such as ants and worms (flower pots and planters really do have life), a leaf that is changing its color, a flower of a particular color, an embroidered flower or even a door stop. Any small item will do.

Rather than picking things up and “collecting them,” (depending on age/s), either pre-make or provide the materials and demonstrate how to make a small picture frame. Wooden, used matchsticks work well for indoor and outdoor hunts, craft pop sickle sticks are better for outdoors.

Explain how to take a pretend picture in the picture frame. And, yes, this is an honor game. Using Wellness Mama’s point system, assign points to each item on your list.

Another activity for children with more patience, use the matchstick frame and sit or lay on the lawn and just look for a minute or two, into the picture frame, placed on one spot. Life is amazing!

You can make a list of things to touch, to smell, to hear (and for tasting, read on….)

A family activity that teaches choices and consequences – create an artfully arranged platter of tiny morsels (1/2 inch cubes or smaller) of tasting foods such as veggies, fruits, tofu – including some with pungent aromas or flavores such as lemon, lime, garlic, etc.) with a little space between each. A green pea would be one morsel. There can be several of the same item or varieties that have different flavores. Sit in a circle with the platter in the middle. Ask them to name the items and help. Talk about each item tell what it tastes like to you and what happens after you taste it and what it does for your body. Then encourage exploration by having the participants – one at a time – choose and eat or merely taste their selection. Encourage comments. This is a great game for introducing new foods..

If your (age 2+) child is convalescing, you might want to do a guided exploration concentrating on one sense at a time, for a minute or more, and have him/her describe each thing noticed while concentrating on that sense. This is fun for grow ups, too.