Lifeskills are one of the most valuable things we can give our children. These lifeskills book reviews will help you to think and plan out how to best help your chidlren acquire vaulable skills like caring for themselves, their environment, their spirituality and their eventual families. The links below take you to Amazon.com. If you are South African, it would be best for you to order through a local online book agent like Kalahari.net


Life Skills for Kids : Equipping Your Child for the Real World
Christine M Field

The lifeskills book's subtitle “Equipping Your Child for the Real World”, indicates what this book is all about! I initially thought that it would be a whole lot more for me to learn but was happy to find that many of the things I already did in my home with the children, was a natural outworking of our relational living style.

But even having said that, this book is fantastic for new and old homeschoolers alike, in fact it should, even more importantly, be given to school kids and their parents to help with the equipping process that they will miss out on by being at school all day.

Chapters are laid out in a user friendly way full of ideas to integrate your children into a lifestyle of learning skills like:

responsibility,

people skills,

home skills,

life,

time organization,

money,

spiritual habits,

decision making,

health and beauty

And creativity.

“The attitudes and attributes that make a good employee are the same attitudes and attributes that make a good kid”

“Time spent together can be the healer of wounded hearts and the vehicle of life instruction.” Christine Field

Please note Sonlight users: this book is available from Sonlight.

Keepers of the Faith

Parents' Guide to Productive Pursuits & Practical Skills for Children
Keepers of the Faith
This lifeskills book is a collection of ideas based on the following two books to teach your children some handcrafts as well as practical lifeskills. I have found that the outlines are a bit too brief on their own and need to be used in conjunction with the Keepers and Contenders books reviewed below.

Keepers at home Keepers of the Faith
Here are the in depth instructions (374 pgs) on how to develop home making and personal lifeskills in young woman. There are also many areas that can benefit young men who will one day need to be supportive of their wives and older sisters.

Skills covered:

Biblical Womanhood – Bible memory, study and reading, journaling and prayer

Creative skills – decoupage, basket weaving, drawing, knitting, scrap-booking etc.

Homemaking – baking, budgeting, first aid, cooking, gardening, laundry etc

Knowledge and skills – biography, genealogy, music, poetry etc.

Nature – birds, flowers, butterflies, horses etc.

Others – community workers, church, etiquette, hospitality etc.

Recreation – various sports.

”We mothers certainly have a job to do. This handbook can be a real help in teaching many of the basics in both a structured and creative manner. The girls will have a great deal of fun learning new skills, and all the while, building character and good habits.” Susan Zakula

Lifeskills book reviews for young womanhood

Do you have a daughter on the brink of young womanhood? Look at these next Lifeskills Book Reviews!

The Care and Keeping of You
Does the thought of speaking to your daughter about puberty send you into confusion – where to start? Which is more important? How will you know if you have covered it all?

The Care & Keeping of You takes care of all of that for you. It opens doors for you to mentor your daughter through the emotional, physical and hormonal changes that are approaching. This colourful and tastefully illustrated book breaks the body into zones – head, chest, belly, pubic, legs and emotions – and covers everything needed to understand the changes that are going to happen. It answers questions about acne, healthy eating, exercise, sun sense, physical changes and a whole lot more. Most of the book can be read by your daughter on her own but some pages on puberty need to be read together. We have had some wonderful mother-daughter times whilst talking through these changes raised in the book. A highly recommended purchase.

In the series is another American Girl publication called Real Beauty which is also a win. It builds on the idea of beauty from within.
Beautiful Girlhood, Karen Andreola.

Are you wanting to teach your maturing young woman some gentele social graces and mannerisms? Karen Andreola has revised this wonderful lifeskills book from Mabel Hale's original book and moms now have a gentle book to read with the 13+ year old daughters.

A Young Woman After God's Own Heart: A Teen's Guide to Friends, Faith, Family, and the Future

This book can be worked through by your young teen
(12+) on her own or you can do it together. Elizabeth George is well known for the way she speaks directly to the heart of issues pertinent to Christian woman. In this book she deals gently but firmly with what it means to be a young christian woman in the 21st century. Highly recommended.

Home Economics Complete Course
By Christian Light Publications

In today's world, academic achievement often takes priority over the art of homemaking in the education of girls. This hands-on curriculum gives young ladies the practical training they'll need to manage a household of their own. Help your daughters learn about food preparation, basic nutrition, hospitality, sewing, and more before they're faced with planning an evening meal or sewing on a button! 60--70 pages each, 10 softcovers from Christian Light Education.

Lifeskills book reviews for young men

Contenders for the faith Keepers of the Faith
Here are the instructions for boys to develop lifeskills from gardening to scripture study, from minor mechanics to fitness. As above, many of the areas can be taught to girls so that they will know how to change a plug or even do an oil change on their car!

Skills covered:

Biblical Manhood - Bible memory, study and reading, journaling and prayer

Field and Forest - Archery, birds, flowers, ecology, outdoor life, pocket knives etc

Knowledge and skills - chess, computers, electricity, hygiene, kites, oil painting, rocketry etc

Leadership - biography, library, organization, propriety, public speaking etc

Others - community workers, great commission, letters, love, neighbors, missionaries etc.

Recreation - A variety of sports.

"We never loose the skills and abilities that we develop when we are young. We tend to get better at them with age. We should always learn everything that we can when we are young. Things we learn now, we may never be able to go back and learn later. So don?t miss out! Get busy right away." Jeff Zakula

A Young Man After God's Own Heart: Turn Your Life into an Extreme Adventure

Here Jim George speaks to young men about the issues that they will face as they grow in their Christian walk. He deals with how to choose friends, how to grow their fauth, dealing with temptation and much more. Again for sons to work through on their own, but I think it will be a wonderful tool for parents to mentor their sons in these discussions.

The Boy's Body Book: Everything You Need to Know for Growing Up YOU (Boys World Books) I recently purchased this book for my pre-teen son and it is a fabulous book to walk them through all the changes that are about to come. It is styled along the same lines as the book for girls "The Care and Keeping of You" reviewed above.

Other books on raising sons can be found at Homeschooling Boys

Lifeskills book reviews for Financial Education

We recently discovered a home based parenting business course which helps you and your children gain an entrepreneurial mindset. While this course was written by a South African team, it has international relevance.

Ka-ching stresses that the "value of the course is directly related to the quantity of time" a parent spends with their child.

Their goal is to help parents teach their children - from 6 - 14 years of age - how to manage finances wisely, business awareness, a specific business project and as they say, most importantly to "entrench important family values".

Midge Hilton-Green co-creator of the Ka-ching program says:
"In teaching and encouraging entrepreneurship over the past 15 years it has been clear to me that the businesses that really work are the ones which the young entrepreneur is passionately interested in. While the Ka-Ching! programme quite correctly starts its young followers off with the "odd job" to create some income - these "jobs" will not easily be sustainable over a long period of time if they are not part of the young businessmans personal interest. If you love flying kites, then perhaps this would be a good business to set up! If you love playing chess, the building of a chess set might be something to consider! If you enjoy making leather products or working on the computer, manufacture leather belts or sell your services as a website creator "

As this echoes the passion we have for our children to work within their particular bent and interests, we feel that it is a program that works with our parental strategy for our children. Be sure to take a look at Ka-Ching!

We like to also teach our children about money using Money Matters for Kids or Money Matters for Tweens (11 - 14 years) or Money Matters for Teens (15 +) by Larry Burkett depending on the age of our children.

Other pages you could also be interested in:
Chore Chart help for your children

Please take a moment to pop over to Kid's Cooking Activities where you will find a fantastic website designed to help you to teach your children cooking, good nutrition and much more using ideas for seasonal and holiday cooking with food fact sheets and set lesson plans. Debbie offers a fantastic resource for parents wanting to strengthen their children's lifeskills in the area of cooking. She also has a free monthly E-zine full of new tips and helps.

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