When my husband and I originally discussed homeschooling, one of the big deciding factors was that we would have more opportuni-ties to teach real life skills to our children. I pictured myself teaching them to cook, starting a garden and growing our own food, building things, and involving them in things like business and taxes. I set out with the best intentions. A few months into homeschooling, I looked back to real-ize we had done a lot of worksheets and zero life skills, unless you count making cookies from pre-made dough.
More seasoned homeschoolers had previously warned me that I would try to imitate school at home during my first year. I nodded politely while reassuring myself in my head that I knew better. After all, I knew the reasons I wanted to homeschool. Yet there I was, demanding my son sit and do worksheet after work-sheet, never making time for anything else. I felt like public school didn’t offer enough recess time for a kindergartener, yet I made my son a prisoner of our dining room table.
It was then that I took a step back, reminded myself why we chose home-school to begin with, and changed our homeschool routine. Adding life skills to your homeschool curriculum may seem like something that is just going to happen naturally, when in reality it’s something you have to be intentional about.
Planning ahead of time
I thought that I would effortlessly in-clude the kids in life skills throughout each day, but that wasn’t happening as I just tried to get through my chores as quickly as possible. I had to become much more intentional about what skills we were go-ing to cover and when. I started by mak-ing a list of things I would like the kids to learn, keeping in mind what is reasonable at their age. I keep the list in my weekly lesson plans book, so as I plan the week ahead I am reminded to work in time for life skills.
Just the simple task of seeing that list and adding to it often keeps it in the fore-front of my mind, and I find it easier to stop and include them in things I am doing throughout the day. I’ve been surprised to see how they have changed in a short time, proudly taking the initiative to do things they’ve learned need to be done around the house. I am starting to see myself become less of a control freak too, with practice.
Logging life skills
As a new homeschool parent, I felt paranoid about keeping a portfolio of our work. It felt like it didn’t happen, or didn’t matter, if it wasn’t somehow logged in the portfolio. To calm my nerves, I started making logs and certificates for life skills. I thought this step was more for me so I didn’t makes them want to learn and do more.
Being open to learning new skills: I never even learned to iron clothes when I was growing up and still don’t know how to sew. I mentioned building things and gardening, yet I’ve never actually done either. One thing I love about intentionally teaching life skills to our kids is that I get to learn along with them. I probably would never take the time to teach myself some of these things if it wasn’t for homeschooling. It’s fun to learn new things together. In doing so, we are teaching another life skill – to always be open to learning new things, and willing to jump in and figure things out!
As the kids get older the options for life skills they can learn obviously increase. Many of the homeschoolers I know do per-sonal finance and leadership classes in high school, among other things. Keep a list that you and your children can add to whenever new ideas come to mind, and be intention-al about making those things happen!
Here are some great resources for incorporating more life skills into your homeschool curriculum:
Skilltrekker.com. This site is all about teaching kids of all ages life skills.
Study.com. For older kids, this site has tons of online courses.
Jam.com. Online courses for kids that range from cooking, music, animation, building machines, and more.
RaddishKids.com. A cooking club for kids.