Skills To Teach Your Kids At Home

Are you wondering how you can keep your kids entertained at home? Would you like to do some home learning with your children but you don’t know where to start?

Home learning isn’t the same as academic education the way that it would be delivered in school. In fact, we are not homeschooling at the moment as much as we are crisis schooling. If you are stuck at home with your kids, this is the perfect opportunity to teach them some essential life skill that they will need for when they go back to school and indeed for the rest of their lives.

Just because you are not doing traditional “school work” it doesn’t mean that they are not learning. Read on to learn about the essential life skills that you should be teaching your kids while they are home.

Table Of Contents

Washing Their Hands

This is something that everyone on the planet should know how to do, but not everyone does properly. Since the Covid 19 pandemic, hand washing has become more important than ever. Check out the videos below to make handwashing fun and easy for your kids.

And because Peppa Pig speaks to all children better than any adult could, here is the Peppa Pig hand washing song. Twice through the song lasts around 20 seconds, so is ideal to sing to time hand washing.

Getting Dressed & Undressed

Tempting as it can be to help your children dress and undress (because often it is painfully slow to watch), getting dressed themselves is an essential life skill that they will need for back to school. Imagine when they go back to school and it’s PE time – the teacher will not have time to dress and undress all of the 30 children in the class.

Under the “getting dressed” skill, consider the following skills that your child will need;

Knowing which way around things go & using things like labels to identify this
Poppers
Zips
Buttons (hint, get them to button from the bottom up so that they don’t miss any)
Identifying which feet shoes go onto

Tying Shoelaces

Although tying shoelaces could arguably fall under the “getting dressed” category, I’ve included it separately as it is a more advanced skill. Get your child to practice on a shoe that is not on their foot to make it easier. Here is a handy video and song to make tying shoelaces simple.

Using Cutlery

Proper use of cutlery in the correct hands is an essential life skill for kids. Not only is it good to teach your kids proper table manners, but when it comes to having school dinners when they return to school, they will need to be able to cut up their own food too.

Laying The Table

Following on from using cutlery, a simple skill to teach your ids is how to lay the table. Get them to set the cutlery out, reinforcing which side the life and the fork goes, plus lay out anything else that you need for the meal.

Telling The Time

Telling the time is a skill that they teach in school, but also a skill that is easy and natural to teach at home. Rather than teaching via worksheets, ask your child what time it is at regular intervals through the day. Talk about what time their favourite show might be on or when their next online class is and work together to end out how long you have left until they start.

You can teach telling the time when talking about how long they have left until a certain activity is over too. Maybe you can say that they can play in the garden until a certain time, or that they have a certain amount of play time before bath and bed time. Incorporate telling the time into their daily routine and it will start to come naturally.

Spending Money & Giving Change

Set up a play shop with play with your children and practice buying and selling things with them. Get them to decide which coins they need to use to purchase a certain item and to calculate how much change they need.

If your children are constantly nagging for snacks during the day, set up a tuck shop. Label each snack item with a price and give them an allowance of money. It is then up to them to spend their allocated money wisely and choose their snacks. This will make them think about what they want to buy and think about budgeting as well as dealing with money.

Making The Bed

A made bed instantly makes a bedroom look tidier and is a fantastic habit to incorporate into your morning routine. By teaching your kids to makes their beds, you are teaching them to take pride in the tidiness of their own rooms. It doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m not asking for hospital corners here, but by simply straightening out the pillow and smoothing out the duvet, you are teaching your kids good habits for starting their days.

Doing The Laundry

As soon as your little one can walk, make a game out of putting laundry in the laundry basket. When you are sorting laundry, gt your little ones to help. Younger children can learn lights from darks, while older children can be asked to look at the care labels and be taught what the symbols mean.

Washing your own clothes is a skill that all adults need, so introducing it early as part of the day is a good way to break them in gently.

Cooking & Baking

There is a wealth of knowledge to be gained and skills to be learned when it comes to the kitchen. From basic kitchen safety (what is hot, what is sharp, how to avoid accidents), to preparing basic meals, to getting creative decorating cakes to maths skills for weights and measures, there is plenty of learning to be found in the kitchen.

Incorporating Fitness Into The Day

Not necessarily a skill, but it is an excellent habit to install into your children is to incorporate some form of exercise into each day. There are some amazing channels for exercise for kids, lots of which I talk about in my Free Online Educational Videos For Kids blog post.

By introducing daily exercise when they are young, your kids will develop a habit to keep them fit for life.

Being A Good Sport

Board games are an excellent way to teach children valuable social communication skills. Play board games together and practice the importance of turn taking, counting and adding together numbers on the dice and congratulating others fro winning even if you are not.

How To Use Scissors

Using scissors can be tricky for little hands, so get yourself some safety scissors and make cutting and sticking one of your home learning activities.

Pencil Grip

One of the prerequisite skills of good hand writing is good pencil grip. Make sure that you are spending time with your children doing drawing and colouring to make sure that they have a chance to practice this.

Writing A Letter

Being stuck in the house with kids is the perfect time to practice letter writing. You can get your kids to hand write a letter to a loved one, then wither mail it or send it out in the post. Alternatively, you can teach computer and keyboard skills when writing letters on the computer to be printed and sent or emailed.