Sheriff Woody Behavior Chart

UPDATE:   Justice LOVES his new behavior chart!!!

Earlier this month, I participated in my first GIVEAWAY courtesy of The Mommy Teacher.  We had tons of mommies AND teachers comment on both of our pages to enter to win a custom behavior chart.  The winner of the chart was Sarah, a very busy mommy of FIVE whose husband has been deployed overseas for months now.  Sarah taught a Financial Peace University course at her church and continues to maintain "financial peace" through extreme couponing.

After The Mommy Teacher's posts about using a Behavior Chart and making House Rules, Sarah and I discussed how she could best use her behavior chart for her son, Justice (age 3), who sometimes has a hard time with Daddy being so far away.

SO, HOW DO I CUSTOMIZE MY BEHAVIOR CHARTS???

First, Sarah and I talked about what Justice LOVES... and what 3-year-old boy wouldn't love Sheriff Woody?  (I got all giddy just thinking about doing my first cowboy-themed art piece!)

Behavior charts are great visual reminders for behavioral expectations and should always be welcoming and friendly.  You want your child to be able to see the chart as a positive thing to help him/her monitor when he/she is doing an excellent job (not just when he/she is breaking house rules). 

I then asked Sarah if she had house rules, or what specific rules Justice was having a hard time following.  She suggested the following:
               1.  Listen the first time.
               2.  1-2-3 don't yell at me.
               3.  Sharing is caring.
               4.  Take good care of your toys.

 Great house rules!  I only had one recommendation:  "1-2-3 don't yell at me" is a great reminder for kids to use a respectful tone, but remember, The Mommy Teacher taught us that we want the rules to be positive.  We changed rule #2 to "Use Kind Words."  There, much better!

Now for the consequences:  I want Sarah to be able to use this chart for years to come, so consequences are going to change as Justice gets older.  What may be a 3 minute timeout now at 3-years old, will be a 5 minute timeout at 5-years old.  I didn't want to make the current consequences permanent, so Sarah will just have to teach Justice which consequence corresponds to which level on the chart.

 Back to our Sheriff Woody Toy Story theme... our levels of consequences are as follows (if you are familiar with Toy Story, you may recognize these sayings from Woody's drawstring).

• Doing a good job:  "You're my favorite deputy!"
• 1st offense:  "There's a snake in my boots."
• 2nd offense:  "Somebody poisoned the water hole."
• 3rd offense:  "This town ain't big enough for the two of us."

I added velcro to the back of the "J" star, and at each of the different levels to move the star up and down based on Justice's behavior.  (Not that his star is going to move down because he is totally going to want to be Mommy's Favorite Deputy all the time!)

Congratulations, Sarah!  I hope Justice's behavior improves thanks to the implementation of new house rules and a visual reminder from the behavior chart.

HERE IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT!!!

Behavior Charts vary in price from $40-$50.