Routines That Teach Life Skills for Kids
You probably are already familiar with routines during times of transitions, like bedtime, afterschool, and morning.
But, did you realize that routines can be used to teach your kids valuable life skills, too?
We’ve got some ideas for routines to add into your week/month/or season that will help your kids gain life skills like planning, cooking and reading. When these become part of your regular routine, your kids will be gaining valuable life skills like contributing around the house. helping in the community, and folding laundry.
Choose one or two of these life skills to begin and see how they fit…..once they are established, they will become just part of what your family does and your kids will be practicing amazing life skills.
Routines That Teach Life Skills for kids
These routines below teach a variety of practical life skills your kids need – and will learn easily with practice. A wonderful side effect of these is that in the process, you may be creating memories and building connection.
Previewing/Planning the week ahead
This is such a valuable thing to do no matter what age your kids are. Looking ahead to your week and talking about what is coming up gets everyone on the same page and ready for the week ahead.
Preveiwing for the week ahead teaches your kids vital planning skills that will be useful in so many life situations.
Choose a convenient night of the week and stick to it. Routines work their magic when they are done consistently – over and over.
Does Sunday work for your family? or would Friday be even better when the school week is fresh in kids’ heads?
Gather round a large family calendar (we love this one)and talk about what’s happening during the coming week. You can get fancy and use color coded markers for different people or different categories, like school and sports/clubs.
It’s a great time to remember all those things that kids can easily forget. Everyone can get out their school calendars, sports schedules etc. and make the whole family aware of what is coming up.
You may have to help your kids with this at first, but as it becomes part of your family’s routine, they will be taking charge of their own schedules. Remember, the main idea is to get everything down in one place that can be viewed by the whole family and referred to during the week. It’s a great spot to post notes or any communication needed to be seen by the whole family, too.
Helping out in the kitchen
Getting kids involved in the kitchen has so many great benefits and there are certainly a lot of life skills to be learned in this area of your home, alone!
Creating a routine helping out in the kitchen could look like many things:
- Choosing recipes to try and prep a shopping list
- Looking at the sales to make budget-wise decisions
- Going to the grocery store to help shop
- Chopping/prepping the needed items, setting the table
- Cooking one meal, or part of a meal each week
- Cleaning up from the cooking and eating.
Bonus: Spending time in the kitchen together also is a great way to bond and connect with your kiddo.
Set up a routine that works for your family. You can have a weekly meal planning session, swap nights of food prep with different kids and/or have teens pick one night of the week to cook an entire meal. Your kids can rotate weekly, so they get to do a bit of everything.
The skills learned are practically endless: Knife skills (Try this free knife skills for kids class), planning a meal, reading a recipe, measuring ingredients, budgeting for food, tasting new food, …what did I miss?
We love these resources that help teach your kids important kitchen and cooking skills. KidsCookReal Food offers online classes for kids to learn many cooking skills.
And they have just added a course for Teens!!
Cooking Resources : Real Food Classes and Raddish Kids Boxes
Laundry Day
If this works for your family, designate one day as laundry day and the whole family can chip in. There are a lot of life skills to learn from doing laundry:
- Sorting clohtes to be washed,
- Washing clothes, pre-treating for stains
- Folding clothes and putting them away, even ironing.
Even the littlest can sort colors or match socks. As kids get older, they can be in charge of their own laundry.
Weekend chore day
Chores are much easier to do when the whole family is together tackling the projects at hand.
Kids learn how to do the task by watching you and become more independent as they grow older.
Including a “ChoreDay in your weekly or monthly routine can teach your kids so many skills. This catch all day can be used to do weekly chores, like cleaning the bathroom. It can also be a great time to tackle seasonal projects, like lawn work or Holiday decorating.
Sunday morning is designated as our Weekend Chore Day. My kids each clean a bathroom and then choose two other tasks from a list created by me. It is a sacred time and they know they have to make sure they are up and at ’em.
Library visits as a family
How nice to model using the library and checking out a few books as your kids peruse and do the same for themselves. Not only are kids learning about the vast offerings of a library, but they are practicing living a life where books and information are important.
Library visits can fit into your weekly, bi weekly or monthly routine depending on your family’s needs and preferences. Mix things up a bit by switching up visiting libraries in different towns. Often you have check out privileges in many libraries within your district.
Museum visits/cultural outings
Making a cultural outing part of your routine can teach your kids so many life skills, not to mention loads of learning of tons of different topics. There are so many things you probably don’t even realize your kids are learning when you visit a museum:
- Social rules of being quiet, keeping hands to yourself, etc.
- Transportation systems and how they work – from parking in a garage to taking the bus or subway
- Paying attention and respecting others space and right to see exhibits, etc.
Join a museum, arboretum or the like and visit as a family monthly or seasonally. If you live in or near a big city join a different museum every year, so kid never get bored and they are exposed to a wide variety of topics.
Check out free days and evening hours, too. Your local library often has passes for local attractions, as well.
Exercise routine
Hopefully your kiddo is getting plenty of sunshine and exercise on their own, but you might want to consider adding the following to a weekly routine or daily bedtime or morning routine.
- Yoga poses or light stretching
- After dinner walks
- Morning bike rides around the block.
- Evening bouncing on the trampoline.
Meditation Meditation may scare some people….but it can take on many forms. Sitting still with yourself and your kiddo for 5 to 10 minutes can dramatically reduce stress and build connection.
Resources for Routines mentioned in this post
A few points to Remember!
Remember! For these routines to be effective, you can incorporate them into your schedule in a way that works. Perhaps your son cooks once a week in the winter, when his school commitments are less. Maybe a weekend night is a great time to make a meal together as a family.
Summertime is a great time to add in some fun things that maybe take a bit of time and would be hard to squeeze in during the year.
