Radical Reward Charts (review)

This is my son's new reward chart from Radical Reward Charts. They sent me one to review, and so far we are very impressed.

Radical Reward Chart

I had been wondering whether a reward chart my be a useful way to encourage my son to do the things I want him to do more of - like trying new foods or getting dressed without too much messing about. 

He will be 5 next month, and doesn't really understand money yet, so a monetary bribe doesn't work. I don't really want to give him sweets or small plastic toys. Stickers are enthusiastically received but tend to get stuck on his t-shirt and then end up in the washing machine. So I looked at the reward charts in high street shops but I found them a bit dull and uninspiring.

The Radical Reward Charts look a lot more fun. My son chose the lovely Reedy River design, which has a blue border and goes well with the blue decor in his bedroom. We have stuck it on the side of the chest of drawers so that you can see it as soon as you walk in the room.

One of the things that is particularly appealing about Radical Reward Charts is that they are designed to be used with a laminated photo of your child to act as a moving piece to move up the chart. This is much more exciting and motivating than obtaining stickers on a conventional reward chart.

My son starts his journey up the Radical Reward Chart

We received a free Radical Reward Chart and laminated photo for the purposes of writing this review. This would normally cost £14 including postage and packing. All words and views expressed are my own.

Playful parenting

This weekend I made a den for my son out of a couple of bedspreads and a blanket (originally purchased from charity shops). It was a big hit with my little boy, so I took the photo above and recorded an audioboo about it.


If the Audioboo player below doesn't work, please click here to listen to it on the Audioboo website.

listen to ‘Playful parenting’ on Audioboo

'Teach Your Monster To Read' - game review and competition

I came across a quote recently: 'Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.' This seems very true - I've been sharing picture books with my little boy, who turned 4 in August, since he was born.

But when it comes to phonics, I haven't really known where to start. To be honest, I have been scared of mispronouncing things and causing confusion when my son starts school.

So yesterday afternoon I sat with my son on my lap and we tried out a new game called 'Teach Your Monster to Read'. This game is absolutely free and we really enjoyed playing it. I'm pretty sure we both learned a lot too, though we were having so much fun that it didn't seem like hard work.

Whether it was herding sheep into the right pen:

Playing a retro platform game with flowers telling you which direction to go in:

Or trying to rescue the princess by choosing the right sounds to climb the tower:

Here are some of the points I thought were really good about the 'Teach Your Monster to Read' game:

• very strong link between the sounds and the letters
• your child can choose which games they play and which prizes they are playing for
• it features the voice of Simon Farnaby, from Horrible Histories

So we will definitely be playing this again!

Draw a Monster Competition

The folks at Teach Your Monster to Read would love to see your little monsters’ monster designs.

They’re giving away £200 of Usborne books to the monsters the judges would most like to have as a pet.

For a chance to win, they’re asking children to draw (or paint or build) a monster and send a photograph of the finished work to go in their online gallery.

The monster can be one from the Teach Your Monster to Read game or from your imagination – it can be friendly, spooky, scary or silly!

The judges will be Cathy James from www.nurturestore.co.uk plus her two daughters – they will have the hard task of choosing the winning pet monsters.

Good luck!

Prizes:

1st prize: £150 worth of Usborne books of your choice*

2nd and 3rd prizes: £25 worth of Usborne books of your choice*

* Subject to availability, of course!

How to enter 

Send a photograph of your monster’s monster drawing to competitions@teachyourmonstertoread.com

Deadline is 5pm on Friday 9th November 2012.

The winners will be announced on Friday 16th November 2012

For full competition details - check out the Teach Your Monster to Read blog.

Disclosure: we will be sent 3 books of our choice from the Usbourne: Very First Reading Series as a thank you for publicising the competition.

Decluttering toys

My husband has always been a bit of a minimalist at heart, whereas I am much more acquisitive and untidy.

But a couple of months ago, I realised that the volume of clutter in the house was starting to get me down. There was so much stuff and it was so disorganized that we couldn't even use anything properly.

The toys were irritating me most of all. For example, all of my son's jigsaws were mixed up in the same box. This made it impossible to do any of the jigsaws. I have now sorted all the jigsaws out into separate ziplock bags and put them in the correct boxes. It took ages, but it was worth it.

There was usually at least one train set spread out on the living room floor and nowhere to put things away properly. The big fabric toybox I bought when my son was a baby was still full of baby toys, even though my little boy is now 4 years old.

So we took the baby toys to the charity shop. We also got rid of the toybox because it was too deep to store train sets, Lego and Playmobil - the small pieces would just have got lost at the bottom.

We bought some underbed storage boxes from Argos to replace the old toybox. We chose the blue storage boxes as these go with the blue carpet in my son's room.

These storage boxes are absolutely perfect. They are the right depth to be usable without small items being impossible to find. We can tidy everything away after my son has finished playing. And the really amazing thing is that my son even helps with the tidying up and tells my husband off if things are not put in the right boxes.

So we have a tidy living room we can actually live in at long last!