Monday, October 26, 2009

recycling

Every day in kindergarten the children mark their behavior charts.  At the start of day, they all keep a clothespin on a chart, all on green, which means good.  Yellow is a warning, red involves discipline and blue means that neither the warning nor the discipline were effective.  There is always a chance to improve one's day and move back to green, but the color at the end of the day is colored onto a chart and brought home for daily initialing.  On Friday, those with green for four or more days are invited to visit The Treasure Chest.  (ooh, gasp, wow!)

I am pleased with the behavior charting method.  I am not a fan of The Treasure Chest.  Nor am I excited by The Treasure Chest at the dentist and the Birthday Gift Bag and (I anticipate) the trinkets given as Trick or Treat gifts. Oh, the stuff, the stuff!  No more trinkets! Erasers that don't really erase.  Super balls that can't be bounced in the house, nor outdoors. Pencils to join the other 100 pencils.  Tiny dinosaurs.  A pair of sunglasses that double as a drinking straw.  (really!)  Stop already!

It is all in the getting, not the having.  They are excited to Get.  They don't care that they Have.  The Stuff accumulates until it drives me batty.  I collect it from  the bottom of the drawers, the bottom of the toy bins, the top of dressers, from under booster seats in the car.  I put it in an opaque bag.  And I give it to the kindergarten teacher.

And my kid comes home with it again on Friday.

5 comments:

  1. I really hate when those junkies come in our house too...

    Along the lines of the stuff coming back home, we gave a bunch of neglected clothes to Goodwill. One day we were at Goodwill, Camille spotted some boots and wanted to buy them. They were the ones that we had donated! Ack!

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  2. I used to collect and save. Now I just throw the junk away. That goes for the candy, too, if it sits too long uneaten.

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  3. Ahhh Treasure Pot! I too have this joy in my life - I offer the crayons, color pages, anything consumable (that's not actually consumable) to the teachers...and my kid picks the Laffy Taffy EVERY TIME!

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  4. I still have pencils that Amy got when she was in elementary school. She'll be 26 in December! Ack!

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  5. I'm amazed that there is a Blue option on the behavior scale. I work for a business networking organization that deals in the behavior of adults. We live by the axiom: what you recognize grows. A corollary to that axiom is: Do not acknowledge unthinkable behavior. Code Blue says to my inner kindergartener: "I could be so bad that the teacher runs out of options. Cool!"

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