Summer break is upon us.  While we are taking a break from the academic side of learning, summer is a great time to teach our children various life skills.  To be honest, I had every intention of teaching Grasshopper so many life skills this past school year.  I didn’t get to them. Life was busy with school, learning of and adjusting to his learning disabilities, and I launched the blog a few weeks before school started. Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s just easier to do some of these tasks yourself than walk someone through how to do them.

So, here we are the end of the school year and we have barely tackled the basic life skills I set out to teach at the start of the year.  Oh well, that’s the beauty of homeschool flexibility right!?!

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Why Summer is Perfect for Teaching Life Skills

I don’t know about your kids, but Grasshopper seems to do better while on a routine.  However, I also acknowledge that he needs a break from schoolwork.  This presents the perfect opportunity to teach life skills.  It really is a perfect way to keep a lighter routine and learn skills to help mom out at the same time.

Since I am not teaching a regular course load over the summer, it also means I don’t need to readjust my schedule too much to fit life skills training into our day.  I simply need to replace some of that school time with whatever skill set we’re currently working on.

This may not seem so exciting for our kids, but they need to start learning responsibility at some point right?  Summer is a perfect opportunity to take a little time each day to work on these skills.  Then, when the school year starts they should be ready to fly solo with these tasks!

Life Skills We’ll Learn

What kind of of life skills will we be working on this summer?  I’m glad you asked!

  1. fold clothes and put them away
  2. weed and water the garden
  3. dust well – He knows how to dust, but misses almost everything so we’ll work on mastering this skill.
  4. vacuum – Again, he knows how to do this but we’ll work on fine tuning this skill.
  5. how to cook – I purchased this class in January with good intentions.
  6. cleaning his room – He knows how, but his beautiful ADHD brain means it’s never done well.  He has too many distractions and forgets the various steps.
  7. Load and run the dishwasher

I realize this list might seem easy for an almost 9 year old.  However, because of his ADHD following step by step directions can be extremely difficult.  I anticipate that I will be walking him through each task step by step several times until he has the task mastered.

What life skills are you planning to work on this summer?