Piano Bucks

I have been teaching the red and blue mermaids piano for a little over a year now, and they've had a healthy mixture of excitement and apathy towards the ordeal. To make piano practice more interesting for the summer I decided to introduce "Piano Bucks." (I got the bucks from this website.) Everytime they practice, and for every lesson, they earn a piano buck. They also earn piano bucks for performing in front of others and babysitting the gween mermaid while the other mermaid has her lesson. With their bucks they can "purchase" items from my store (the white cans). The cans are filled with fun little things like stickers and candy and dollar-store toys. However, if they have the self control to save their bucks they can get even better prizes! For ten piano bucks they can get a whole pack of gum of their very own, rent a video, have an hour on the computer or go on a mommy or daddy-daughter date with no other mermaids. For twenty piano bucks they can get a new pair of shoes or a notepad and new markers. The grand prize is a new Cloverleaf bunny play set which costs 50 piano bucks (about $19.99).

For the first two weeks they only wanted the immediate gratification of getting things out of the cans. But after they started saving --and combining--their piano bucks they found they found they could get more quality prizes.

This is so fun for them (and consequently for me) and they are wizzing through their piano exercise book. They practice whenever they get a chance...so much that we had to put a "cap" on the number of piano bucks they earned in a day (five). What is more fun than rewarding them with prizes is seeing their piano skills improve, and seeing how delighted they are that they are learning faster. An additional plus is that they are getting a good introduction to how money works.

We've being doing piano bucks for a little over three weeks now. I'll give you a report at the end of the summer on how it went over all.