Do you have a lovely stash of goodies at your place? We practice the law of candy consecration. 🙂 Everyone’s goodies go into one big pot, we remove anything that’s taboo (choking hazards, stuff that rips out dental fillings) and put the candies with egg in another pot. I also pull out some candies for St. Nicholas shoes and Christmas stockings because it saves me money and they don’t need this much candy all at once. Then what’s left the kids can pick from – one piece a day. They learn to prioritize what they want!

For lessons we had them inventory the candy (language, handwriting, reading) and then catalog it (counting, and teaching our 5 year old how to use tally marks, comparing the survey results.) Then they each got their one piece. (We won’t discuss how many the adults get a day.) 😉

If they got something special (glow bracelet, cupcake, bubbles, etc) then we let them keep that, of course. But the rest goes into the communal pot and I’m surprised no one has protested yet. It avoids comparing/complaining about amounts and fights over trades and they each get a chance to pick their top priority every day so they know they’ll get stuff they like. So far it’s working!