10 Important Life Skills to Teach Children Up to Six Years Old

02/28/2017

Written by: Hannah Tong

Parents worry about their children in many ways: how they will fit into their environments, whether they will be successful, and how they will contribute to society. More than anything, we are concerned with their ability to develop skills to help themselves in the modern world.

Practicing these 10 important life skills teach children up to six years old will give them a head start and ease your worries about their ability to care for themselves.

Life Skills for Children Up to Six Years Old

1. Practice Personal Hygiene and Maintenance

Ideally, by age three your children should be able to care for their bodies in basic ways. Children this young should be able to brush their own hair and teeth with minimal help.

They should also be able to wash their face and hands, and dress and undress themselves. By age six, they should be able to do all these things by themselves in addition to taking a bath alone.

It is not uncommon for six-year-olds to take a shower by themselves. Good personal hygiene habits should be taught early and reinforced on a regular basis.

2. Play by Themselves

Before turning three, children should be encouraged to play safely by themselves for a short period of time – under some supervision, of course. Children should know that they don’t need others to have fun and that they can find enjoyment in their own company.

3. Play Cooperatively

While learning how to play by themselves is a necessary skill, learning how to play with others as a team is just as necessary.

Children should be regularly encouraged to value the benefits of working well with others. Not only should children learn to work together when they play, but they should learn to work with others for shared educational purposes.

Teachers like to implement projects that encourage working in teams because this promotes desirable qualities for school and, eventually, the work force. Some of these qualities are self-control, diplomacy, and time-management.

4. Prepare Some Foods

By six years old, children are ready to prepare some of their own foods. They should be able to pour their own drinks and make a sandwich.

They should also be able to make juice from a mix and add milk to their cereal bowls. This is also a great time to make sure they understand how to operate a microwave safely.

5. Help with Basic Housework

By age three, children should be able to do basic housework like picking up their toys, putting clean and dirty clothes in their places, and tidying up their bedrooms, including making their beds.

By age four, they should be able to dust, empty the dishwasher, and empty small wastebaskets.

Children between the ages of five and six are a lot more capable of helping around the house. Children at these ages should be able to do many additional chores including feeding and watering any animals, putting dishes away, and organizing their rooms.

6. Understand the Basics of Money

Understanding what money is and how it works is vital to modern survival.
Spending, saving, and giving are all important life skills. By six years old, children are perfectly capable of understanding how to work with money.

7. Communicate Clearly

In their early years, children often get frustrated because they struggle to be understood. Teaching children to communicate clearly while they’re young is the best way to limit these frustrations.

By six years old, children should be able to explain their ideas. In the modern world, people are constantly connected and communicate on a regular basis.

Teaching your children proper communication will help them avoid feeling separated from those around them. A little practice in saying what they mean should help them overcome their communication deficits.

8. Proper Use of Technology

Technology is much more advanced and popular now than it was thirty, twenty, and even ten years ago. In addition to knowing how to operate modern technology, children should learn to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources, as well how to use this technology responsibly.

The telephone is one example of modern technology that is. By four years old, children can remember their address and phone number, and by age five, children should know how to make emergency calls. By six years old, children should be able to make and answer regular phone calls.

While your kids are on the computer, another important piece of technology, educational websites should be encouraged, and access to more adult-oriented entertainment-based websites should be limited. Not only are children more likely to find something online that you don’t approve of, but spending large amounts of time browsing the internet for entertainment won’t teach them much about the modern world (except fads, perhaps).

9. Think Creatively

Most children are better at thinking creatively than adults, so long as they aren’t pressured to be overly logical. Honing this creativity could actually help in problem solving and critical thinking.

Many think that thinking logically and methodically is the only way to find a proper solution to a problem. However, thinking outside of the box helps the brainstorming process, sometimes making it easier to spot the problem and create a plan to fix it.

There are many activities you can do with your children to help spark creative thinking. You could show your children a few ways to make rainbows through prisms or water, and encourage them to find other ways to refract light.

You could also give them little projects like finding a way to turn on their bedroom light from outside the room using a piece of string.

10. Think Critically

Practicing critical thinking may be one of the best life skills parents can teach their children. Thinking critically requires observation and analysis to overcome complex problems.

You can help them along by turning these questions into projects. Children benefit from trying to figure some things out on their own, much more than by just giving them the answers.

Children who know how to ask questions like “Why?” and “What if…?” are less likely to struggle with solving problems when they get older, making them more independent adults.

These 10 important life skills to teach children up to six years old are things that we adults know are important to survival in the modern world.

The good news is the minds of children are like sponges – they absorb everything. Creating stimulating learning environments that promote the habits we want to reinforce is key in helping them acquire the life skills we know that they need.

Parents may be the biggest influences on children, especially young ones. So, while they’re still young, you should teach them to be more independent while helping them gain an accurate perspective on how the world works.

Hannah Tong is the founder of Omaby.com, a blog dedicated to providing advice on mother and childcare and truthful information. She loves taking care of her kids and teaching them the right things. She is enthusiastic and enjoys sharing her experiences about how to protect family’s health.