IHP 025: How to Incorporate Skill Trek and Teaching Life Skills Into Our Homeschool Year
Post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This is Episode #025 and today I want to talk about how we will be incorporating Skill Trek and teaching life skills into our homeschool schedule.
Listen to the Podcast:
My Notes:
Why teach life skills?
Life skills are important. But many times we are so busy with the academic studies that we forget about teaching our kids basic life skills that will help them as they get older. We either don’t think about it, don’t have time, or find it easier to just do things ourselves (that’s me!).
But we know that teaching life skills is important. We know that in order for your kids to be self-sufficient, learn how to take care of themselves, to save money by being able to do things around the house, we have to be intentional in this area.
So if teaching life skills is important, how do we go about doing it? How do we know what skills to teach? This is where Skill Trek comes in.
Related: What Basic Life Skills Should I Teach My Child?
Skill Trek is an online software that gives you all the teaching resources you need to teach hundreds of life skills to your kids. Skills are geared for different age groups, so you can find skills that match your child’s development level.
Each life skill lesson has a short video teaching the skill, and a PDF file to print with the information on the skill being learned and a challenge for the child to complete to master the skill. So they make it very easy for you to use and incorporate into your learning time!
Another wonderful feature of Skill Trek is that when you purchase a subscription, it covers the whole family! So you can have all your children working in the software at no extra cost!
Ok…now that I’ve explained a little about Skill Trek, I thought I would take some time to share with you how I am planning on incorporating it into our homeschool schedule. This isn’t the only way, but something I came up with to keep us accountable and making progress in learning life skills.
How We Will Incorporate Skill Trek Into Our Homeschool Year
1 – A VISIBLE PLACE FOR CHARTS/SKILLS SHEETS
You need a place where you can display the charts and PDF sheets of skills being worked on. This can be a bulletin board or an empty place on a wall. Even on the side of your refrigerator. Whatever works for you and the space you have. I will be using a bulletin board that is on the wall in our kitchen.
Print out the nugget charts for each child and place on the bulletin board at the top.
Underneath the charts, post the sheets with the skills being learned. As the parent, you have the ability to go into the software the customize the skills your children are learning. So once you have the skills selected you want each child to be working on, then print out the PDF files for those skills.
Maybe put a pocket up to put them in? This will help mom and dad and child to remember what they are to be working on.
Older children will enjoy using the Skill Trek Planner and Journal that comes with Skill Trek. Instead of the nugget chart, they can track the skills they are learning in their planner. These planner pages can be posted up on the board instead of the nugget chart.
2 – WEEKLY CHECK-IN
Thursday afternoon is going to be our Skill Trek check in. We will go over skills being learned (watch the video together and read through the PDF file). When skills have been mastered, then assign new ones.
3 – DAILY REMINDERS
During the week, each child will work on their skills with help from mom and dad as needed.
Add Skill Trek to your daily schedule. This doesn’t mean that you have to do hours of Skill Trek every day, but set aside some time each day to spend working on the skills being learned. Some skills will have to be done at certain times, or may be things that can’t really be worked on every day. But a daily reminder to check in will make sure everyone is making progress!
For my older kids, I have Skill Trek on their daily “to do” list for homeschool. This will remind them to go to the bulletin board, see what skills they are to be working on, and either work on that skill for a little bit, or figure out when they can work on that skill in order to master it.
4 – CELEBRATE SKILLS MASTERED
As my kids master skills, I go into the Skill Trek software and mark that they completed the skill. Then it awards them “nuggets” on their charts. If you are using the printed Nugget Charts, you can use stickers or something to show as they work through the skills.
I am going to plan a special time at the end of each month for the kids to share with the whole family what skills they learned that month. It won’t be anything big, but maybe a fun snack to go along with it. I haven’t decided if I will do some sort of awards or prizes for completing a certain number of skills or not. If I do, I will probably do something like “Complete ___ number of skills and win a book of your choice.” But you can decide if you want to award some sort of prize for completing a certain number of skills.
Want to give Skill Trek a try?
If you aren’t sure if Skill Trek will work for you and your children, you can take a look at some demos here! You can even sign up to receive the Skill Trek Starter Kit for free! But whether you use Skill Trek or not to help you teach life skills to your children, the important thing I want to get across to you today is that this is an area that we must be intentional about.
As you begin to make your plans for the next homeschool year, include teaching life skills!
_______________________
For more episodes and information on how to subscribe, visit the Intentional Home Podcast page!
