Life Skills Class

Life Skills are manual, physical, and personal skills one needs to be successful in life. Pursue these skills intentionally with your children. Make Life Skills Class an official part of your homeschooling record, so that your intentional work in this area can count as part of your school day (helpful if you have a suggested minimum number of daily hours and you are following The 5-Minute Homeschool method for academic work which leaves a LOT of "free time!"). Below are my plans for Life Skills Class.

Life Skills Activity Schedule for My Kids Ages 4 to 9

Skills
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Craft*
Coloring
Scissors
Glue
Paint
Stamps/Stickers
Follow Directions or Diagram
Robot Coding
Board/Card Game
Tangrams
Snap Circuit
Lego Kit
Home
Sewing
Laundry
Cleaning
Cooking
Organizing
Personal
Good Choices
Gross Motor
Personal Finance
Goals and Time Management
Etiquette
*Note: Drawing is such an important skill to me, that I include that in The 5-Minute Homeschool time (see Language Arts section on the Planning page). 

Craft Skills Learning Objectives

Coloring
Scissors
Glue
Paint
Stamps/Stickers
Coloring
Coloring Skills Objectives
  • Color purposefully (no more random scribbling)
  • Color with logical (realistic) colors
  • Color within the lines easy
  • Color blending with 2 similar colors
  • Color within the lines more detail harder
  • Color depth
Coloring is an important skill that develops spatial awareness, recall (remembering how things look), hand-eye coordination, color matching and color coordinating. Start with "big and easy" coloring books or simple shapes. Then, proceed to books with more detail. By middle school, coloring can be used to explore history and science topics through educational coloring, like the Dover coloring books series.
Scissors
Scissors Skills Objectives
  • Hold scissors
  • Open close scissors
  • Snips paper
  • Snips paper moving forward
  • Uses helping hand
  • Cuts straight line
  • Cuts curved line
  • Cuts circle shape
  • Cuts square shape
  • Cuts complex shapes
Work in order. Try not to move forward till previous objective is mastered. This summary list was taken from the article, Scissor Skill Development Checklist for Ages 2-6. Please read the whole article for more details on techniques AND for a scissor skill activity packet to work on these very skills! There are other workbooks available (Kumon has a good one) that focuses on systematic skill building scissor activities.
Glue
Glue Skill Objectives
  • Place objects on pre-made glue lines and dots
  • Use glue stick
  • Squeeze glue puddle, control amount
  • Squeeze glue dot on marked spot
  • Squeeze glue line on marked line
Paint
Stamps/Stickers

Follow Skills Learning Objectives

Homes Skills Learning Objectives

Personal Skills Learning Objectives

Good Choices
Gross Motor
Personal Finance
Goals & Time Management
Etiquette
Good Choices
Gross Motor
This is essentially a physical education component. Since I am no expert in PE for kids, I was grateful to find a comprehensive list of Gross Motor Skills by a PE Teacher that we can work on.
Personal Finance
Goals & Time Management
Etiquette