Brownie Points/Marbles

You’ve seen that adorable idea on Pinterest called Brownie Points, right? 

Well, my school district is a no junk food district.  This means I can’t use this idea; I can’t use the cute Dum Dum flowerpot idea, or even the little hugs (chocolate).  It really gets frustrating coming up with things.  I loved the days when I could pass out a Jolly Rancher to a student who was paying attention, and magically…everyone in class was paying attention! 

Our school is also a PBIS school.  One of the things we do is we have staff members in our specials reward our class a marble for following the expectations in that class.  The kids or teacher tells me we earned a marble and we add it to our class marble jar.  It is a 4 inch tall plastic jar that holds 25 marbles in it.  I have it sticky tacked (is that a word) to my desk for the kids to see it all the time as a reminder.  When the jar is full, the class votes on a reward.  We had movies, stuffed animal days, slipper days, game days, etc.  Sounds great, but wasn’t as effective as the year progressed. 

The problem with this system is that it isn’t big like the brownie point idea.  That is big and cute!  A great reminder for the students.  I don’t have a lot of wall space in my classroom, so that was my other problem with the brownie point idea.

So here is what I came up with.  I wanted a larger container so the kids can REALLY see it.  I wanted big balls that looked like marbles.  Great, easy idea right?  NOPE!  I had a hard time figuring out the balls.  I went shopping at Wal-Mart looking for ping pong balls, thought that would work.  Well…I lucked out.  In the golfing aisle on the bottom shelf were golf practice balls.  They came in a wire container and they were foam!  Yes!  And it was $13 for 48 balls (cheaper than ping pong balls).  I got the container from Michaels (using the teacher discount of course).

So here is my final project!  I think it is a better visual to remind them to be on their best behavior to get those marbles filled up quickly!  What do you think?