How To Teach Life Skills In Your Homeschool

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There are so many things that we want to teach our children.  We’ve got our twelve year homeschool plan, with all the courses selected years ahead of time.  We know what character traits we want to help them to develop.  It’s important to add Life Skills to our homeschool plan.

Life Skills?  Yes, the basic skills needed to succeed in life (when we’re not there to do everything for them.)  I personally don’t know any homeschool moms or dads that want to raise a dependent child.  But, with our culture of babying children, I think it’s a good idea to intentionally prepare our kids with basic life skill training.

I’m sure you really don’t want to have to plan more lessons or add more curriculum to your day.  But, the beauty of homeschooling is that life skills can be taught by doing life.  Yes, in our everyday living just including your children in adult tasks will begin preparing them for living on their own.

The hardest thing for kids is to wait too long to let them participate in adult tasks.  Most kids learn to do their own laundry just before heading off to college.  That’s not the best way for them to learn.  Teaching life skills gradually through the years will help them to be good at the skills and confident in their abilities.

Wouldn’t you rather them learn to cook with you in the kitchen?  As you include them in meal preparation, they will learn from your modeling good techniques.  Cooking will become something you hand-down to them and they’ll feel an emotional reason for cooking.  This emotional connection can be repeated in many different areas.

Guys will gain so much information from their dads when he’s changing the oil or maintaining household items.  Guys and girls need to have life skills modeled before them.  Kids learn as they do and won’t forget all the training you provide.  They’ll also be thankful for what they’ve been taught at a young age.

So many young people don’t have life skills, because they sit in a school desk all day for 12+ years.  They just don’t have time when they get home, because of hours of homework.  Homeschooling is such a beautiful way to have a family.  A family that learns together is the best!

You may not need it, but if you prefer having a lesson plan to guide you, there are many available.

Budget Planning

How to Apply for a Job

How to Plan A Meal

How To Shop For Groceries

How to Prune A Tree

How To Wash Clothes

Video: How to Pump Gas

Huge list of Life Skills Worksheets

You can easily google any life skill and find a tutorial or youtube video that teaches it, step-by-step.  Of course, the easy way is to just do it with your child.  But, it’s best to do these gradually.  It’s not fun to teach many of these skills during their senior year of high school.  They will not be interested as much at that time, and will be very busy.

My children learned many life skills by helping my husband and me around the house.  Many of the skills they have learned are now saving them a lot of money.  The skills were also very helpful in college.  ex. My daughter was the only student in her master’s program that could sew.  This promoted her to lead the class in a huge project.  This occurred numerous times with her, because she had been homeschooled and learned life skills that aren’t taught to everyone.  She can also change a tire, if she has to.  These are just two examples of having her prepared for life.

Do you have any great life-skill stories?  Were you prepared for life?  How are you teaching your children life skills?

Check out these Homeschool favorites of mine!

@2017, copyright Lisa Ehrman