30-Day Life Skills Challenge!

April 9, 2024

30-Day Life Skills Challenge

My 11-year-old wanted to find a way to earn money for a season pass for an amusement park. He has some allowance money he can contribute to purchasing the season pass, but he does not really have any additional ways to earn money at this time. After some thinking and brainstorming, we decided to try out a 30-day life skills challenge to learn some age appropriate life skills, along with some other skills that he has been wanting to learn.

As a first step, we negotiated that if he contributed $40 of his allowance to the amusement park season pass, he could earn the remaining money by learning 30 new life skills over the course of a month. We will purchase the season pass when he finishes the 30-day life skills challenge.

We then talked about whether there were any skills that he was interested in learning. He immediately stated that he wants to learn how the fuse box works and how to flip a breaker when it goes out. Now that it is spring and there is a lot of yard work to be done, he asked if he could learn how to plant perennials in one of our garden beds and if he could learn how to use the chimenea to burn leaves safely. I also asked if he would be up for learning how to do some more complex parts of his current chores including cleaning his shower, doing his own load of laundry from start to finish, and cooking his favorite meal (veggie burgers and fries). Lastly, we looked at the list of life skills for 11-12 year-olds and 13-14 year-olds in the book Capable by Sarah Albright and he chose some skills he would be interested in learning (e.g., how to unclog a drain, how to read and understand a bill, how to stop a leaky faucet).

Finally, we made a plan for how to actually work on these 30 skills over a month. First, we said that while a realistic goal would likely be to strive for learning 7 new skills every week, we may need to work on 2 skills during days that we are not as busy (e.g., Saturdays, Wednesday after dinner). We also chatted that some of these life skills would involve looking up the information (e.g., how to put out a grease fire, how to use a fire extinguisher) and then learning about it by reading an article or watching a video. Many of the skills (e.g., laundry, cooking, yard work) are also things that me or his dad are doing on a daily or weekly basis, so these would be easy to target because he could just do them with us. We decided to post the list in the kitchen so that we could cross it out skills as he worked on them and also keep track of how close he was to earning the season pass to the amusement park.

On day 1, my son decided to learn how to pump gas while on a spring break trip. His dad walked him through how to do each step and modeled some of the steps he had never done before (e.g., pay for gas with a credit card, open the gas tank). The next time we get gas, we will have him try out doing each step on his own and help out as needed.

Here is our final list and we will keep you posted on our weekly progress!

Use a fire extinguisher
Learn how to put out a grease fire
Know when to go to the doctor or urgent care
Put together a list of rules when babysitting siblings
Know which vaccinations he will be getting over the next 8 years
Stop a leaky faucet
Prevent pipes from freezing in cold weather
Unclog a drain
Host a friend for a sleepover (how to be a good guest, keep space clean, offer food/drinks)
Fix Wi-Fi connection
Understand how fuses work and how to fix a broken fuse
Know what to do in a power outage (report outage, keep food in fridge/freezer, turn off/disconnect appliances to avoid a surge, done use an oven to stay warm)
Identify sources to keep up with current events and weather
Pick up a prescription and get a refill
Write, endorse, and observe how to cash a check
Pay bills (read and understand the bill, pay it online)
Find his clothing sizes for different items (e.g., pants, shirt, socks)
Understand how to register to vote
~~Pump gas and pay for it~~
Make a list of items needed at the grocery store
Find items in the grocery store using a list
Check out and pay for items at a grocery store
Learn a new skill by watching YouTube
Use the chiminea to safely burn sticks
Plant perennials in the yard
Cook burgers (stovetop) and fries (oven)
Do load of laundry from start to finish
Clean the shower
Pull weeds (how to identify a weed vs plant, how to identify poison ivy)
Water the flowers (without wasting water)

30-Day Life Skills Challenge!

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30 Day Life Skills Challenge – COMPLETED!