Toy Store

Borrowing an idea from Mimi, I decided to set up a little store in our play room. I bought a few new toys (BOGO) at Toys R Us, and taped price tags to each toy. (There are also a few belated birthday gifts which we received last week that also went into the store :)

To keep things simple, we are using Chuck E. Cheese coins for money. The number on each price tag is about twice the dollar value of the toy, making each Chuck E. Cheese coin worth about $0.50. I think it will be a great way to teach them (esp. Caleb) delayed gratification, basic math, saving vs. spending, and (my personal favorite) get some daily chores done sans whining. So far, I'm only letting them earn 1-2 coins each day. Caleb gets a coin in his jar for cleaning up the whole play room before bed time, and for completing all of his "school" work each day. If Ethan is interested when Caleb is working for a coin, I give him a different job to do so he can earn a coin, too. I don't really expect him to understand much about the store, but life would be unbearable if he wasn't allowed to do exactly what Caleb is doing :)

My one fear is that Caleb will start asking for coins every time he does something I ask him to do, which is why I'm capping it at 1-2 coins a day, and only for specific jobs. I'm actually not a big fan of paying kids for household chores. In general, I think kids should do their assigned chores because they live in the house and are part of the family, not for money. But I think there are enough good things to be learned from this little store thing that I'll suspend my ideals for the time being :)

One final note about the store's name: Ethan wanted to call it "Caleb & Ethan's Store" and Caleb wanted to call it "The Star Wars Store", hence the extra-long combination name.