D&D Minis, Cougar Paws & Responsibility Charts

Hello D&D World. I'm back! Or at least slowly making my comeback. After several months (I won't count because that is already far too much math) of remodeling, LLL crud, and having our 4th child, I am trying to get back into those things I truly love...my kids and gaming. Let me clarify. I love my new house and I want to make it all homey and I love breastfeeding (who doesn't love boobs). It just that these things have been all consuming in the last 6-9, oh let's be honest year!

So I am taking a moment from those other priorities to tell you about an AWESOME conversation or two that I had with my kindergartener this morning and yes it's about D&D minis.

We have this cool ONE STEP AHEAD responsibiity chart at our house. We got it for Shane before there were any other kids in the place. Now there are these two other minions running around who need purpose in this campaign and eventually the little dragon egg, Vivian (5mth) will as well. There is no way to document 3 other PCs on this sheet!

At school Shane is rocking out the merit system: Cougar Paws. They have a Green starting place yellow, orange, red is similar to getting your name written on the board and then check marks after (what discipline was in  my day) blue, and purple are your gold stars. You only get Cougar Paws on days that you also get blue or purple. Anyway, this seems to be the standard for most kindergardens around the area, nothin' new, KIS. I've been trying to think of a way to implement "cougar paws" at our house. Because the other day Shane was telling me yet another catchy phrase Mrs. M uses to get them to stand in line and he tellls me, "Mama, you just say, 'Hands on your head, hands on your hips, hands, hands behind your back and zip your lips.' [whispering the last part of course] And I'll do it any time." Then he went on, "I'll tell you more stuff Mrs. M says so you can say it to us. We'll do what ever you want then." Ah the magic of the kindgergarten teacher.

Shane is an amazing person. I asked him to hang up all the coats yesterday because his twin brother and sister are 2.5 yrs old and have a hard time with this. We have them try it often but they usually get really frustrated and give up rather quickly. Wyatt, has taken to putting the rocks we just had filled in next to the house into his coat pockets. With out being asked Shane emptied his brothers pockets and put the rocks back in their place and then hung all the coats up. He's only 5.5 yrs old!!!! Sorry Chadarius but I'd have to ask you at least twice and it would take you 3 days. Our oldest son ROCKS (wow terrible pun)!

So at breakfast today I had a chance to talk to Shane about this to make sure he knew that I noticed the extra effort. I told him if we did Cougar Paws at home I would have given him one for what he had done. I asked him what he though we could do instead of Cougar Paws. Together we decided that we would get jars for each kid and whenever they do something awesome we will put one of our D&D minis in it. Each kid has a set number goal. We decide to do separet jars because Mama & Dada will get to take minis away when there is super inappropriate behavior and Shane & Wyatt don't want their minis to suffer for any of Amelia's screams.

All in all I think it's a fantastic way to mash D&D with parenting, don't you?