Fun Activities to Teach your High School Students Life Skills
What teen does not benefit from learning life skills? When I was in high school and middle school, I did not learn many life skills and had to figure it out on my own with a lot of trial and error!
Skills such as applying for a job, writing a check, using credit, cooking healthy foods, career exploration, and more are so important for future success but are often overlooked in schools.
1- Writing checks and learning about using credit can be very dry. We created these board games that help to make the concepts fun to introduce! We have this free writing checks activity that you can print and use with your classes in small groups! Students see who can earn the most points answering questions while moving toward the finish line.
This video clip is a great introduction to checks and how to write a check:
🌟 Here is a check writing practice worksheet that is a perfect way to get your Life Skills high school students excited about learning a basic and necessary skill. Even though more and more people pay bills online, check writing is still a necessary part of life (for now).
We also have a credit card board game for basics on using credit and credit cards. This is a great activity to set up and let your students self-direct for an entire period! The questions are editable so you can add new questions so that you can play this multiple times.
Click the image for the credit game
2- Teaching nutrition is a basic life skill that can have lasting, positive effects. Students can use the MyPlate website to help them determine the foods they should eat based on their activity level, gender, and age. You can then have them create a meal plan based on their MyPlate quiz results. We use this nutrition log that is both digital and printable to help our students create their own meal plans.
Your students will love this because it gives them the control to plan their own meals and create something that they might actually use!
This nutrition log helps students organize their daily meal plan based on MyPlate quiz results!
Helping students learn to grocery shop on a budget is another important skill. We have a MyPlate Go Shopping activity in which students get a budget, and a grocery list and have to create a meal plan for themselves based on their nutritional needs. Canada also has a great nutrition guide if you are interested in exploring other resources.
3- Career Exploration and Resume Writing is another life skill that is often overlooked in school and is so important for students to have as they enter the workforce. This free online packet has some great activities to help with career readiness and exploration.
We start off each career class with a bell ringer that gets the kids thinking about possible careers and career readiness. This career exploration journal is a great way to organize your class by having students in a routine of answering a question each day when they enter the classroom. The journal is in both print that you can put into folders or in digital format for Google.
Wondering how to use bell ringer journals in the classroom? Check out our blog post that explains how to use them and ways you can use them. They can be a great instructional tool for classroom management and routine.
