5 Soft-skills You Can Teach Your Kids During This School Holidays

Bringing up your kid to be a dynamic and flexible person is not an easy task. It requires a lot of efforts from parents to mould such character. One essential thing that you must do to achieve this is by helping them to develop and improve skills in their life. By mastering some, they will be able to handle difficulties better in life. During this school holidays, how about spending some of their free time together, to put more efforts into that? 5 Essential Skills For Your Kids 1. Communication Photo credit: istockphoto Communication is one of the most important skills in life. One needs to be able to communicate well so that they can understand and deliver messages accurately. The best approach would be to teach this skill since childhood. Communication skill can be divided into many parts such as listening and non-verbal. A problem in communication always happens when the message is misinterpreted or delivered poorly. So to tackle this problem at an early age, parents should teach kids how to receive, comprehend and convey the message accurately. To make it easy, let’s work it from two perspectives which are as a receiver and as a sender. Activity that you can try: The activity that you can do to enhance the communication skill from both perspectives is, for example, listening to audio and answering questions based on that. Play any audio such as a narrative and without letting your kids jot down any note, ask them a set of questions later regarding the story. Their ability to answer the questions correctly is interrelated with their ability to listen and comprehend the content well. Such activity with few practices will improve their listening and also, verbal communication skills. 2. Gardening Photo credit: istockphoto Kids nowadays really love playing with gadgets to a point that they are fine doing that for the whole day. It is not that being skilful in handling technology is bad. But having other skills that are beneficial yet less damaging would be better. Take, for example, gardening. It is not only easy but enjoyable as well. There are many activities in gardening that you can teach your kids such as planting a flowering tree and growing a plant from its stem. If you need more ideas, you can get some tips here. From preparing the equipment, cultivating the soil, planting the plant and growing to its full size, your kids will be experiencing many new things that are beneficial for them. As John Muir said, in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. Let’s get back to nature! 3. Critical thinking Photo credit: istockphoto Some people choose to abandon problems due to the hardship they will be facing. In life, it is wise to face and solve the problem rather than running away from it. And to do that, one needs to be able to think critically in a different situation. Some mummies and daddies underestimate their kids’ capability. In actuality, kids are more than capable to learn and grasp new information. As it is one of the essential skills in solving a problem, critical thinking skill should be taught since childhood too. Teach them how to critically view, for example, a situation. Like observing, analyzing and evaluating it thoroughly. One example of activity that can help to develop better critical thinking skill is playing puzzle. It is fun but able to challenge your kids’ critical thinking skill. 4. Self-care Photo credit: istockphoto To live well, one has to be independent and able to take care of themselves. Kids are pretty dependent but with proper guidance, they are capable to care for themselves better than our expectation. Instead of spending extra time and letting them be reliant, how about teaching and showing them on how they can be independent? Let’s start with their daily routine such as taking bath and putting on clothes. Some parents still shower their kids even though they are already five years old. Did you know that at this age, they can do that without or at most, with minimal supervision? Cleaning themselves, tidying up the bed, washing cloth and shoe, eating and drinking, doing dishes; these are all totally doable. With proper guidance and few practices, they will be able to master self-care skill and even help out mummies and daddies doing some chores. Isn’t that great? If they enter into a boarding school later, their life will be much easier by having this skill. 5. Cooking Photo credit: istockphoto Food is one of the essentials for a human being. Generally, parents do not prefer kids being in the kitchen with them. Let alone teaching them how to cook. While it is totally understandable that it can be dangerous, mummies and daddies can actually teach your kids how to cook safely. Kids of different ages should be taught on how to cook with suitable methods respectively. Take, for example, those in primary school are capable to cook their meals using an air fryer. All they have to do is put the marinated chicken (you can teach them how to do this too!) into the air fryer and set a specific time and suitable temperature. Isn’t it great that our kids are capable to prepare their own meals? Cooking skill will never go wasted. The better you are at it, the more benefits you will gain. Teaching your kids how to cook isn’t only to better themselves but to instil the interest from an early age. Photo credit: istockphoto Due to Covid-19 outbreaks, we have to stay home more than ever. It is time to do what we couldn’t previously. Let’s teach our kids some essential skills in life so that they will be more dynamic and flexible!

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