The Cooperation Game

Our family enjoys a traveling game that has proved very successful with our children (ages five, seven, and nine). It’s called the Cooperation Game.

I decorated a large, shirt-sized box, and filled the inside with sundry items such as gum, small balls, coloring books, a coin purse, rabbit’s foot, and a marble bag. This I called the Cooperation Store.

I also purchased a package of play money and labelled it “cooperation dollars.” As we were traveling, I would pay the children one cooperation dollar each hour, providing they listened to their parents, did not fight with each other, and generally displayed a cooperative family spirit. As they earned cooperation dollars, they could shop at the Cooperation Store. The store items were priced from two cooperation dollars for gum to six cooperation dollars for a marble bag.

The children’s cooperation dollars were not taken away if they misbehaved; they simply did not earn any for that hour.

As a result of this game, our long distance traveling has never been more pleasant. We did not play the game as we camped or toured, but that same agreeable spirit seemed to permeate our time together. Understandably, a vacation with cooperative children is a great one! Cheryl Linford, Fruit Heights, Utah