How do you use Laying Down the Rails?

I am currently working through the book with my ds6 (first grade). We have been focusing on the three big habits of attention, obedience, and truthfulness.  Even though we are primarily focusing on attention right now, obedience and truthfulness are always on our radar.  I can try to explain my process; it seems to be working for us, but I am still tweaking it as we go.  After reading the handbook I made two charts.  The first has a “Habit” column of Punctuality, Order, Attention, Diligence, Obedience, and Gentleness.  Each of these consist as a row with five columns that are labeled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.  This is my “big picture” of things I want to pay attention to myself even as we are focusing more in depth on the other habits.  So it operates on a point system where there are five possible points for each habit and its corresponding day.  For example, if ds doesn’t come to the table to begin school the first time I ask on Monday, a point is marked off.  He now has 4/5 points for Monday for Punctuality.  At the end of the week I tally up the points and if he does 75% or better we do something for fun to celebrate.  With the second chart I began with the Mental Habits checklist that was included in the back of the handbook.  For example, we are currently concentrating on the mental habit of Attention.  So I created a chart that has one column that lists the characteristics in the handbook: “gives attention top priority,” “makes appropriate mental associations,” etc.  I separated out the ones for which my son is responsible (“completes short lessons within given timetable,” etc) and those for which I am responsible (“varies the day’s lessons,” “is careful not to require too much work or too difficult of work,” etc).  It seemed to help my son when I explained to him that home education is a corroborative effort – we each are expected to do our part so it goes smoothly and is enjoyable for both of us.  I walked him through each component and explained what it meant and tried to give him examples.  This little chart keeps the components before my eyes so that I force myself to be diligent with habit-training – it really does go both ways.  As I see him progressing I will praise him/congratulate him/acknowledge him and his efforts; if he is struggling with one, I take time to talk to him and encourage him so that he can improve.  We have also used the Child’s Book of Character Building, Book 1, this year along with the Scripture verses provided by SCM and those have reinforced our habit training efforts.  Blessings, Zelena