December Life Skills to Practice

Practicing life skills is important all year round, but during different times of the year, there are some skills that will naturally come up and be easier to teach. December life skills are filled with practical activities from the simple “how to wrap a gift” to “how do I plan a budget.”

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December life skills to teach your kids

Baking

In December, most people do a little more baking than they do in other months. Maybe you’re baking Christmas cookies for a party or cookie exchange or you’re baking pie for your Christmas dinner. Or maybe your family just loves an excuse to bake some extra sweets!

Along with just the basics of measuring ingredients and putting them together, holiday baking is an excellent time to learn about following a recipe, ingredient substitutions, and modifying recipes for food allergies. It’s also a wonderful chance to get creative!

Budgeting

Kids don’t automatically know how to steward their finances. Share how you’re budgeting for Christmas gifts, holiday parties, or traveling to see families. Have your kids set a budget for gifts or give them a budget to work with to buy gifts for siblings.

Help your teens practice how to plan out their year-end giving to your church or other charitable organizations (this is a great time to talk about how this works into taxes!). Give them insight into how to be frugal when it comes to shopping for gifts and how to prioritize things you need versus the ones you just one.

Now is also a great time to talk about planning a yearly or quarterly budget! Your teens would benefit from a peek into the family budget or how you decide where to allocate your family funds. How much money does it really take to run a household? As you wrap up your own year, don’t forget to let your kids in on this process with you.

Goal Setting

As you practice these December life skills, don’t forget that it’s is an excellent time to review the year behind you and look forward to the new year ahead. What went well in the last year, and what would you like to go differently?

Use this time to set goals for academics, personal responsibilities, finances, etc. Spend some time as a family and individually reflecting over the previous year and praying, planning, and preparing for the new year.

These goal planning pages are an excellent tool to use for yourself or your kids:

Time Management

Not everyone is naturally good at organizing their time, scheduling, or balancing down time and active time. Since the holidays tend to be packed with parties, concerts, plays, and family get-togethers, it’s a good time to discuss with your kids why you say no to some things and yes to others. How do your family values factor in when deciding what to attend and what to skip?

This can also help your kids to understand why you said no to the third holiday party this week in order to stay home. If you have an extrovert in your family, they may have a hard time understanding the need to leave space for down time in your schedule.

Another aspect of time management: how do you plan for all the extras during the holiday season and still leave time for all your regular responsibilities? The house isn’t going to clean itself, even if you have to spend your time shopping for and wrapping gifts. Make your kids (especially your older ones) part of this process!

Winter Health and Wellness

There are different things we do to care for our bodies in each season, and winter is no exception. If you live in a colder climate, you might be increasing your Vitamin D. Maybe you are using a tallow balm to care for your dry skin. If there are illnesses going around, teach your kids about the things your family does to naturally support your immune system and stay healthy.

You can also share with your kids the things you do to combat any seasonal mood slump and why getting outside (even in cold weather!) is still good for our bodies.

This is also a great time to talk about how to dress appropriately for the weather… something that’s surprisingly difficult to teach teenage boys. ;)

Sewing, Knitting, or Crochet

Maybe you’re making Christmas gifts or just cozying up in front of the fire, but winter is a great time of year to teach your kids how to sew, knit, or crochet. Grab some embroidery hopes, snuggle up on the couch, and practice together.

With more time spent inside, now is also a great time to tackle all those mending projects you’ve been avoiding (it’s me… I’ve been avoiding them!). Teach your kids how to mend clothing, so they can handle simple clothing repairs when they leave home.

Winter Home Care

What types of things do you need to do to winter proof your home? As you go about these tasks, take your children (especially your teens!) along with you, so that they can learn how to care for their own homes someday.

Do you do anything special to the windows or fireplace? Turn off the outside faucets? Put away hoses? What do you keep on stock for caring for snow and ice? Tune up the furnace or change the filter? Does your snow blower need maintenance?

If you have a wood fireplace, teach your kids how to care for it and all about chopping, stacking, and keeping the wood dry. How much wood do you need for the season?

If you’ve been a homeowner for awhile, these things might be second nature for you. But your kids need to learn these skills too. These seasonal tasks are great to add into their responsibilities around the home, especially in the teen years.

This is also an excellent time to talk to your kids about what kind of things you keep in your emergency preparedness items. What would you do if the heat went out in your home? Do you have a procedure or supplies to keep yourselves warm or to keep the pipes from freezing? Hopefully these things never happen, of course, but these prevention strategies aren’t just things our kids will know, unless we teach them.

I would also put winter animal care under this umbrella, if you have outdoor animals like chickens. Especially in cold climates, animal care changes significantly in the winter months, so teach your kids what to do differently to keep your outdoor animals safe and warm.

Hospitality

Of all the December life skills, this is one we practice often. But whether you’re actually hosting a holiday party or just attending them, December is a great time for our kids to learn about hospitality. What do you need to do to prepare your home for guests? What cleaning or other preparation tasks need to happen? What kind of meals do you need to plan for your guests?

The home management toolkit or Cultivate Your Home Planner have meal planning and home keeping task lists/chore charts to help with this!

If you’re not the host, but a guest in someone else’s home, how do you behave? How do you offer to bring something? Do you need to bring something even if you weren’t asked? What should you wear?

This is also a great chance to learn how to be gracious when the food or accommodations aren’t what you’re used to or expecting.

Winter Car Prep and Maintenance

What you do to prepare your car for winter and maintain it throughout the season will depend on your climate, but your kids (especially any teen drivers in your home) will want to know these skills too.

Here are a few suggestions:

• put together emergency kit for the car, in case your car gets stuck in the cold/snow
• learn about the emergency services available in your area like AAA, tow services, etc.
• show your kids what tools you need in your car during winter, like an ice scraper
• teach your teen drivers what to do if they get stuck or stranded somewhere in the cold (especially if something happens to their phone or they don’t have cell service!)
• what extra car care happens during the winter – do you add snow tires or use a different kind of windshield wiper fluid?

You can find some of our favorite road trip essentials HERE, including our car emergency kits!

Generosity

Gift giving and end of the year donations are the perfect opportunity to model and teach your kids how to be generous with their money, talents, and time. Take time as a family to think carefully about what someone would really appreciate as a gift, instead of just grabbing the cheapest item at the store.

Share with your kids the places that you’re giving at the end of the year, and be sure to talk about the why behind it. It’s also a great idea to talk with your teens about how year-end giving affects your taxes and the details about how/why to report it on your taxes.

Don’t forget about teaching kids how to respond to someone else’s generosity. Teach them how to write thank you notes or say thank you when someone gives you a gift (even when the gift isn’t something you really want).

What other December life skills do you teach your kids? Share them in the comments below!