Essential Skills to Teach Your Children

You are your child’s most important teacher!

No pressure or anything but yes, you are your child’s most important teacher. It’s a big responsibility but there’s no one better for that job than you!

So what exactly should we be teaching our children? Is there a guide to follow?  These are great questions and the answer is…teach them the Essential Skills!

The 9 Essential Skills (aka life skills) that EVERYONE should learn to some degree include:

• Reading
• Writing
• Document Use
• Numeracy
• Computer Use
• Thinking
• Oral Communication
• Working with Others
• Continuous Learning

These skills were researched in-depth by the Government of Canada and other international agencies. Their determination of the 9 essential skills was made into a document that you can review here. Take the time to read it and get familiarized with the essential skills. They are key to this parenting strategy.

Teaching the essential skills to our children is very easy and best of all, you don’t need to do anything new!

• First, we as parents must become aware of which essential skills we use throughout our day.
• Secondly, involve our children in your daily tasks. This will give them the opportunity to practice and improve their own set of essential skills.
• Lastly, allow your children to learn. Avoid stepping in and doing the task for them. Perfection is certainly not the goal here, but rather it’s all about the process of learning the essential skills.

Now take an example of any task that you do in life such as washing the dishes, setting the table, riding a bike, or planting a garden. Next, dissect the task to show each step. Here’s an example:

Baking Cookies

1. Decide what kind of cookies that you want to make
2. Find a recipe
3. Locate ingredients, measuring cups and spoons, bowls, and cookie sheet
4. Go shopping for any missing ingredients
5. Determine how long the cooking process will take
6. Preheat the oven
7. Measure and mix ingredients with mixer
8. Roll cookies into balls
9. Place balls onto cookie sheet
10. Put cookies into oven and set the timer
11. Wash dishes and clean baking area while cookies are baking
12. Remove cookies from the oven
13. Place cookies onto a cooling rack
14. Once cooled, share them with family and place remaining cookies into a storage container

That is sure a lot of steps when you pull it apart like that! Now let’s determine which essential skills are required for each step:

Essential Skills Required to Bake Cookies

1. Decide what kind of cookies that you want to make | Thinking
2. Find a recipe | Thinking, Reading, Computer Use, Continuous Learning
3. Locate ingredients, measuring cups and spoons, bowls and cookie sheet | Reading, Numeracy
4. Go shopping for any missing ingredients | Thinking, Writing, Reading, Numeracy
5. Determine how long the cooking process will take | Numeracy, Thinking
6. Preheat the oven | Computer Use, Numeracy
7. Measure and mix ingredients with mixer | Numeracy, Computer Use
8. Roll cookies into balls | Numeracy
9. Place balls onto cookie sheet | Numeracy
10. Put cookies into oven and set the timer | Thinking, Numeracy
11. Wash dishes and clean baking area while cookies are baking | Thinking, Numeracy
12. Remove cookies from the oven | Thinking
13. Place cookies onto a cooling rack | Numeracy
14. Once cooled, share them with family and place remaining cookies into a storage container |  Oral Communication, Numeracy

Tasks such as this probably seem tedious and routine but a total of 7 essential skills were used to bake cookies. Let’s take a closer look:

How Each Essential Skills was Used

1. Decide what kind of cookies that you want to make | Thinking |Decision making. May have to base decision on what ingredients are on hand or on how much time you have to bake.
2. Find a recipe | Thinking, Reading, Computer Use, Continuous Learning |Search through cookbooks or find a recipe online. You may want to try a new recipe.
3. Locate ingredients, measuring cups and spoons, bowls, and cookie sheet | Reading, Numeracy | Organize and sort equipment, read the measurements on the cups and spoons, read the ingredient names on bags/bottles.
4. Go shopping for any missing ingredients | Thinking, Reading, Writing, Numeracy | Write a shopping list, read the list, money handling at the checkout
5. Determine how long the cooking process will take | Numeracy, Thinking |Calculate total time it will take to mix and bake cookies.
6. Preheat the oven | Computer Use, Numeracy | Know how to use the oven. Set the oven to the correct temperature. 
7. Measure and mix ingredients with mixer | Numeracy, Computer Use | Use the correct measuring cups/spoons to calculate volume of each ingredient. Operate mixer.
8. Roll cookies into balls | Numeracy | Roll each ball the same size. May require use of a spoon to measure cookie dough.
9. Place balls onto cookie sheet | Numeracy | Sort balls by placing them equal distance from one another. Count how many balls per sheet. Calculate room for expansion.
10. Put cookies into oven and set the timer | Thinking, Numeracy, Computer Use | Know how to use the timer. Set timer for correct number of minutes.  Read numbers.
11. Wash dishes and clean baking area while cookies are baking | Thinking, Numeracy | Sort dishes when washed and place back in correct cupboard. 
12. Remove cookies from the oven | Thinking | Need oven mitt for safety. Place cookie sheet on heat pads so that the countertop doesn’t burn. Place cookie sheet in safe place away from little ones.
13. Place cookies onto a cooling rack | Numeracy | Figure out if the cookies are cooled enough for transfer. Move cookies onto the cooling rack with a spatula. Arrange cookies so that many cookies can fit on the rack.
14. Once cooled, share them with your family and place remaining cookies into storage container | Oral Communication, Numeracy | Ask family members if they would like a cookie. Find storage containers that are large enough to fit the cookies.

By making a batch of cookies, our children have several opportunities to develop the essential skills.  As a parent, I found this to be so inspiring! It gave me the confidence to believe that I have the ability to teach them important life skills and best of all, baking cookies doesn’t even look like teaching. The teaching aspect is completely masked by fun. This is often the best and most enjoyable way to learn.

Parents, I can’t emphasize this enough- it’s extremely important to take a step back and allow your child to make mistakes and to learn from them. Make sure that you are guiding and not doing the job for them. Get out of the way of their learning, work beside them, and simply enjoy the moment. This is when lasting memories will be created in addition to developing all of these important skills.

It is our responsibility to prepare our children for life. We want them to be successful, happy, intelligent and to live meaningful lives. Encouraging our children to develop the essential skills will guide them along a path to success and happiness. It will also lay the groundwork for acquiring all other skills.

Parenting became so much easier and more meaningful once I discovered the essential skills and how to teach them to my children. It gave me a solid guide that I needed in order to confirm that I’m doing a good job as a parent. It also gave me an awareness of exactly what I should be emphasizing in my parenting technique.

To review:

Step 1: Keep the 9 essential skills in mind as you make your way throughout your day. You will soon see how many (if not all) of these skills you use throughout your day.

• Reading
• Writing
• Document Use
• Numeracy
• Computer Use
• Thinking
• Oral Communication
• Working with Others
• Continuous Learning

Step 2: Include your children in your daily activities to help them develop their essential skills.

Step 3: Whatever you do, don’t take over! Give your children room to learn. You can guide and encourage them along the way.

Teaching the essential skills to your children is a great way to prepare them for life! Give this method a try and let me know what you think. Feel free to ask questions and leave comments on your successes or difficulties. Thanks for checking out my post today!

*Last year I received a casual job as a family literacy facilitator and it was only as I was prepping to facilitate the Get Set Learn Afterschool (GSLA) program that I came across the essential skills. The GSLA program is based on these essential skills. Here is more information about GSLA.

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