3 Ultra Practical Life Skills

Grow Academic Skills While Becoming a Better Human

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

I speak to a lot of home educators at conferences. Some families are very practical. They make life skills a big part of a child’s education. At the same time Billy is learning chemistry, he is applying that knowledge to cooking a delicious dinner. Other families tell me that their children aren’t expected to do many chores or family tasks while their student must focus on academics at all costs. Mastering certain mundane (non-academic) life skills is the best way to develop strong academic faculties while getting ready for life.

Learning how to follow directions, how to develop multi-stage projects, and how to focus on details form the three-part groundwork necessary to accomplish practically any goal in life. Here are my favorite three (very non-academic) ways to develop yourself academically while also increasing enjoyment in life.

Learn How to Cook

How well a cook can read and follow directions is the main difference between terrible horrible no-good chocolate chip cookies and the epic kind that cause the whole family to sing one’s praises. Sure, some people go through life happy dumping frozen nuggets out of the factory package but they’ll never beat grandma’s recipe.

When I was around 8 years old, I received a cookbook for my birthday. It was brightly illustrated, and it broke down instructions to manageable bits. I began to work my way through that cookbook. After a year or two of hard use I had prepared every recipe (even the ones calling for lime Jello). After enjoying initial success and after recovering from initial failures, I was willing to take on more difficult projects with more elaborate steps. When I was 11, I remember making an elaborate French dish with layered crepes, beautiful vegetables, and a creamy bechamel sauce. I prepared the dish from memory after watching Julia Child make it on one of her episodes. By the time I was 16, I was the head cook at a summer camp making meals for 100-200 people to earn money for college. Well before the days of heat-and-serve industrial food, everything I cooked was from scratch in a huge wood-burning stove. I did not have a cookbook there! Instead, I had learned how to follow instructions and follow the rules of cooking years earlier. It turns out that roast turkey and the side dishes for 5 people is not much different than preparing the same meal for 150 people aside from time and proportions.

Start easy! Follow a simple recipe that sounds tasty to you, master what it takes to multiply the recipe to increase proportions, and then challenge yourself to try more and more difficult projects. Learning how to follow recipes taught me the rules of food. Once I knew the rules, I rarely needed recipes anymore while I also learned the cooking steps that I could omit, ignore, break, or slightly alter without issue.

This is true for most things in life. Learn the rules of the game, follow them, and practice them well. Once you are comfortable with the skill set (cooking, martial arts, playing an instrument, building a model, crafting something, or writing a lengthy research paper), you can safely omit, ignore, break, or alter SOME parts of the instructions while you must carefully observe the important procedures that make the recipe or project work.

Learn to Grow Vegetables

Ever had a long school project that requires research, an outline, several rewrites, and lots of project management skills like patience, adaptability, and critical thinking? Many students are overwhelmed by the scope of such a long project. They often skip groundwork tasks (writing an outline or carefully evaluating resources and selecting knowledgeable research) but then try to jump right into the bulkiest part of the project without adequate preparation or planning. Science fair projects have been a staple of in education not because science teachers need another paper-mache volcano to clean up, but because students must learn how to plan, research, and develop long term projects.

There are a lot of ways to develop project management skills in life but the most practical way is to learn how to garden whatever you have a little spot in the sun, however big that spot might be. Sure, if all you have is part of a patio you’ll have different challenges than if you have a whole yard but everyone should start with a patio anyway!

Months of organic fresh veggies, plenty of sunshine, physical exercise, and brain-building mental challenges are already part of the paycheck for growing a vegetable garden. Successful growers learn essential project management skills plus how to problem solve. With a little tenacity (maybe a LOT of tenacity) you’ll figure out how to overcome challenges and work out how to harvest tasty rewards while building essential life skills.

Risk and cost management comes in as you balance planting times, frost dangers, heat, watering, and the expenses of growing from seeds or starts while squirrels, bugs, and deer threaten. The importance of research becomes clear as you solve the riddles of choosing cultivars that work in your area plus how to treat any pest or disease challenges.

Planning and forecasting the 4, 5, or 6 months you have for active growing, succession planting, and harvest echo what you might be tasked with in challenging academic program, college class, or career path. Leadership and good communication play a role when you need help weeding, crafting a new arbor, or establishing a new planting area.

Time management means you learn to attend to the garden’s needs while issues are still practicable. In the end you’ll not only have delicious things to eat (and share with neighbors and family) but also patience, adaptability, and critical thinking will develop as you combat your garden challenges and reap rewards.

Learn A Fiber Art or Two

Being able to focus on a single task is rare. Most of us have popcorn brains because we must multi-task constantly. We live cluttered chaotic lives in which we have phones, devices, texts, projects, entertainment, demands, obligations, people, appointments, classes, cats, assignments, dogs, and basic daily needs all competing for our attention. Our brains pop back and forth from emphasis to emphasis through the day. We’re lucky to spend 15 whole minutes concentrating fully on a single task without interruption so how could fiber art help this mess?  

Learning to knit, crochet, sew, stitch, weave, macrame, or even do leather work, etc., all impart the important life skill of paying attention to details in the most relaxed yet focused way possible. Work a little cross stich project. Finish a simple crocheted scarf in your favorite color. Figure out how to macrame a hanging for your favorite personal space. To accomplish even the smallest project means you must spend undivided time focusing on the details of something you will enjoy and appreciate afterwards.  

Start slow and build your skills. Focus and attention grow with practice. If you are knitting a cool little basketweave potholder, you can’t look at your phone every 3 minutes or you’ll drop a stitch! If you are counting cross stiches, you’ll have to gradually grow out of your popcorn brain habits or you’ll find yourself redoing your work three or four times. Ever try sewing a quilt? It is all about focus or you’ll wind up ripping out seams and starting over.

The best thing for our poor modern ADHD popcorn brains is gradual daily training in focus and details on things that are soothing and fulfilling to give us a nice payday for our efforts!

So, don’t omit these practical skills from life because they “interfere” with the demands of our academic development. Indeed, these things build and inform our abilities in the classroom and while making life a bit sweeter ever more.