Sunday, March 6, 2011

Life Skills

Sadly, Andrea, I think you are just as far along - if not more - as I am in planning these classes.  I pretty much just copied Diann Jepson's ideas as a starting place and tweak them as I go.  Although my oldest daughter is nearly 13, they have just recently become more pertinent to her.  She has a much bigger desire to learn these things now that she's seeing the benefit in her life.  Not that getting her to cook was ever a problem. 

Our cooking class has been our most successful so far, and has involved giving my child the responsibility of cooking for a certain meal every day.  Breakfast has worked well for us.  I teach them how to make everything, and then they have to get up early enough to have the meal ready in time.  The great thing about doing the life skills class this way is that it was real-world consequences.  If they sleep in and don't make breakfast, dad goes to work hungry. 

Now that Hannah's 12, and is ready to move on from her "Bank of Dad" account to a real one, we need to create a money management course, but I haven't gotten it done yet.

Some other ideas for life skills classes I'm working on:
first aid/babysitting
event planning
meal etiquette - how to properly set a table, serve, play hostess
gardening
car care
basic sewing
driving (only two years until I actually have to think about this one!!)

I read that practice scholar phase is the best place to really work on a lot of these adult skills.  We are in the middle of figuring out exactly how that's going to look in our family.  Lots of discussions going on with my husband and daughter as she moves into a new phase of life. She's definitely our guinea pig!

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