Technology Tickets

We live in a world of Technology and I'm ashamed to admit my children have been swept away. I've been lazy about it. Letting them play games waaaay too much. It saddens me and we've decided to change that. 

Occasionally I have crazy ambitious ideas geared towards the kids and one of those ideas hit me a few months ago. I decided I needed make certificates that allow each boy a certain amount of time for video games and TV a day.

 I loved them. They were so cute. The issue was, they were overwhelming and hard to keep track of. The boys occasionally wanted to watch more TV or play more Video games. Way more stress than they were worth. I definitely overshot this one.

We needed simple! 

After thinking about it, I decided that playing Video games was no different than watching TV or playing on the computer. Why do the times need to be split up?

I decided to simplify and make Technology tickets instead. They could trade those tickets in for anything. TV watching, Video games, or computer time.

I busted out my handy laminator that my amazing friend got me for Christmas. It's a awesome and I LOVES it. You can find one on Amazon, here. I highly recommend it! It's so easy to use and can do so much!

Yes, I laminate on the floor. It's how I roll.

 

I made up new tickets on photoshop and printed them on card stock. A different color for each Monster,  plus bonus tickets for those days when Mommy needs peace the boys are being good.

 I cut them all out individually and place them in the handy laminator packets. 

They are basically 2 sheets of plastic with a sealed end. You place the items you want laminated in, making sure there is space in between the items, press the sheets together a bit and feed the sheet through the machine. Can it get any easier?

Almost instantly the machine spits out a nice, thick sheet of plastic with your pictures, certificates, etc nestled in the middle.

If you don't have a laminator,  use clear contact paper, which you can find for pretty cheap at Walmart around the kitchen supplies. That's what I did with our first certificates.

 

I trimmed all the tickets down, making sure to leave a little bit of space around each one to keep it sealed tight. 

Sure they aren't the fanciest things, but they are durable and in my house, durable always wins.

   

They each get 2 hrs a day to do whatever they want technology wise, which is plenty. 

They get stored in these handy little pockets I made with some scrapbook paper and some straight line sewing (which I am amazing at. Be Jealous.) Green means go, you have more certificates to use. Red means stop. If they use them or lose them, they go in the red pockets.

Hopefully this will work much better. The boys already know how the certificates work, I'm just hoping this goes much smoother. I'll let you know what happens!