Why You Should Use This Online Life Skills Curriculum with Your Teens
Are you looking for a way to help your teens learn what they need to become successful adults? If so, consider using an online life skills curriculum, like Life Skills Reimagined.
It’s a great way to help your teen build the soft skills they need to be prepared for the future, without requiring a ton of hands-on time from you.
Keep reading to find out more about the lessons we’ve been working through and why I think this program is a helpful tool for parents of older teens.
I received this product for free to write about my experience and got compensated for my time. I was not required to post a positive review. These are my honest opinions. See my disclosure statement.
Check out what we thought of Life Skills Reimagined and how it can help you. Plus, get a discount for your family!
Independent Living Lessons
As parents, we must take the time to teach our teens independent living skills. Why? Because this knowledge will help prepare them for adulthood. Many find themselves ill-equipped for the real world, so teaching your child how to be a good employee, deal with difficult people, budget, and manage their time will help them immensely once they move out on their own.
It will also help them be more self-sufficient. Many teenagers who don’t learn these skills end up relying on parents well into adulthood, so it is important for kids to learn how to take care of themselves.
Plus, teaching your homeschooler basic living skills will also build their confidence. Many teenagers who don’t have these fundamentals feel like they are not good enough or that they can’t do anything on their own. However, by teaching them how to be self-sufficient, we empower them to succeed in life.
So, how do you actually teach these things?
How To Teach Your Teenager Life Skills
There are many effective ways to teach life skills to homeschooled teens.
A simple one is to incorporate them into your daily routine and lessons. For example, you can teach budgeting by having your older kids help you balance the household budget or take a turn making a meal plan and doing the grocery shopping.
Another popular idea is to use a curriculum that focuses on life skills. You can look for something that teaches one specific topic, like communication, or use a broad program like Life Skills Reimagined.
High School Life Skills Curriculum
Life Skills Reimagined from LYFT Learning is an online curriculum that walks teens through critical life skills that they’ll need to be successful adults. It contains about 60 hours of content, so you can count it as a .5 credit on your teen’s transcript.
Topics include
- Communication Skills
- Getting & Keeping a Job
- Independent Living
- Personal Finance
- Resiliency
While these are the high level subjects, there are dozens of important topics covered within them. For example, as part of the communication skills course, teens will learn what effective communication looks like, how to manage negative emotions, ideas for working through conflict, and how to deal with difficult people.
In the getting and keeping a job section, they’ll learn how to dress on the job, ways to handle issues that come up, the importance of being on time, and get career planning tools.
The program contains several modules, each with an animated video to walk teens through key points they need to know. There’s a baseline quiz for older kids to see what they already know about a subject and a posttest, to determine how well they understood what they watched.
Each section includes a printable action plan with questions for teens to ponder or assessments for them to take.
Disclaimer – I have to state that the program covers some sensitive topics. Kids can easily skip sections if necessary. You can have your younger teens work through the topics you’re comfortable with and save the deeper things for your older kids.
Life Skills Reimagined
There are four main reasons I recommend using this online curriculum to teach teens some of the soft skills they’ll need as adults.
1. Quizzes and Tests
Giving teens quizzes throughout the modules and tests before and after helps you both determine whether they’re understanding the material.
The questions give students several scenarios to think through and the chance to apply what they’ve learned.
While not every example directly relates to your teen’s life right now, the underlying lesson is important. Plus, it’s something that they’ll need at some point, so now’s the time to build the fundamentals they’ll need as they grow up and move on.
2. A Teaching Partner
I love the fact that my teen is learning from someone other than me. With life skills, I feel that it’s too easy for our kids to think that what we’re telling them is irrelevant.
For example, when we talk to them about what’s expected from them on a job, they may feel like our ideas are old-fashioned or out of touch. They (and their friends) may think it’s okay to wear ripped jeans to work or watch videos when things are slow, but through this curriculum, they’ll quickly learn that their expectations may not be industry standards.
When it’s presented as part of an online course, it’s harder for teens to argue that we just don’t know what we’re talking about when we’re encouraging them to hold themselves to a higher expectation.
It’s also very easy for older kids to navigate the website, so they can work through the bulk of the course independently, freeing you up for something else.
3. Opportunity for Discussion
When I choose a curriculum, I often look for one that helps me have deeper conversations with my kids, and Life Skills Reimagined has that covered. While teens can work through the animated lessons and quizzes on their own, you can use the printable action plans to sit down with them and talk about what they learned and how they can apply it to their lives.
You can also give them alternate scenarios to think about and share how they’d handle a situation.
They provide the relevant questions, so it’s incredibly easy to fit this into your homeschooling day.
I also appreciate that this one-on-one discussion time gives me the opportunity to share our family’s values and expectations with my kids as it relates to the specific subject.
4. Steps Aren’t Being Missed
I find that it’s easy to forget exactly what I need to cover when teaching life skills because it’s been so long since I’ve learned them. Many of them feel like common sense. But they’re not. They’re learned. And it’s up to us to make sure our kids get what they need to start off on the right foot.
For instance, it’s been years since my first job, so it was hard remembering what my teens needed to know when they started working for someone else. Or how overwhelming it was to make my first budget and stick with it.
I know that when I try to teach skills like these to my kids; I end up missing important steps because I just don’t think of them as part of the process.
Again, these are things that are second nature to us now that we are older because we’ve had a lot of practice. Our teens have not. This online program systematically walks them through important subjects.
Overall, I really enjoyed this program and am having my older teens go through several modules. It’s important that they are solid with relationships, employment expectations, and personal finance, so I appreciate the opportunity to build their skills at home before they have to encounter them as adults.
And it’s a bonus that they can work through it on their own, at their own pace.
If you are looking for a way to fit life skills training into an already busy homeschooling schedule, take a look at Life Skills Reimagined.
Use This Independent Living Curriculum in Your Homeschool
Ready to check it out for yourself? Head over to Life Skills Reimagined and use the code HS2022 to save $20 off a new membership through December 31, 2022.
What excites you most about using an online life skills curriculum?
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