SweetKoKo: Technology Tickets!

It has become depressingly obvious how much my 6-year-old daughter depends on either the iPad or the computer for her entertainment. Last week any time she would ask to play on the iPad and I would tell her no, she would then tell me how bored she was. Seriously, the girl would have been miserable if she grew up in the same era I did! We were lucky to have the internet!

Anyway, after going out to dinner and looking around at all the kids at the other tables playing on their parents cell phones (and mine playing on the iPad)....I decided something needed to change. Drastically. I saw this on Pinterest a while ago, and thought it was a great idea.

These are technology tickets. Each one can either be worth 30 minutes, an hour, whatever you feel necessary. Basically, Kaitlyn starts out with 6 tickets every Sunday. Hers are worth 30 minutes each - so that's 3 hours of playing on the iPad/computer. Let me just add that the games she plays on the iPad are educational-type games....so it could be worse. :)

I took a small clipboard, painted it with chalkboard paint, then covered part of it in scrapbook paper. Then I added two pockets (one for the tickets used, and one for the tickets she hasn't used yet). The pocket with the "K" on it is for the tickets she has used. These tickets work well for visualizing how much time they have left for the week. The pink tickets clipped to the top are 3 extra tickets, just in case my husband and I feel she has done something that deserves a reward. So, she can have time added, if we feel she deserves it. I added some pretty ribbon and cute bows, just to make it look better. I put the days of the week on the bottom, just to help her remember how many days her tickets have to last her.

This project was so easy to make! The hardest part was waiting for the chalkboard paint to dry. So far she's done pretty good, but we've only been doing it for a few days. Hopefully we can stick with it!