Category: Life Skills

The Mini-Book Project

Every once in awhile I find myself without technology access due to school wide testing and I need an alternate assignment. This was how the mini-book project came to be. You could consider this an interactive foldable where students must use class notes and resources to complete. The beauty of these is that they can be used with any age group and can be as simple or as elaborate as you want them to be. Below you will find a few ideas on how mini-books can be used with FACS related topics.

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Childhood Obesity…The Rest of the Story Activity

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are definitely needed for today’s teens to prepare for the real world and life The rest of the storyon their own or with their future families. What better way to prepare them than to provide them with a real life scenario that needs to be solved. In this activity students are introduced to a problem and must work together as a group to figure out and creatively write and present the “rest of the story”,as the late Paul Harvey would say on his radio broadcasts. The beauty of this activity is that you can create a scenario that needs solved using any crisis type topic. I used childhood obesity, but you can use other important topics such as bullying, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, financial debt, finding quality day care, divorce, dating violence, aging and more. So let the scenarios begin!

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Consumer Promotions Lesson

If you’re like me you’ve been at the cash register ready to check out when the clerk tells you about some new rewards card or store credit card offer that may sound appealing. To make matters worse you may have rewards credit cards that beg you to use them to earn points towards your next airfare, or cash back. You may have thrown up your hands and declared I’ll take no special offers or you may be one to take most special offers. How do you navigate in the world full of offers for EVERYTHING? Which deal is the best? This lesson gives students an opportunity to look at specific scenarios with REAL companies’ offers and do the math.

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Resumes, cover letters, and Linkedin for highschoolers

I can’t help but tell my students a story when it comes to this lesson about this time someone interviewed for a job at a place I worked wearing a pencil skirt, five inch heels, and a leopard printed sheer blouse that showed off her hot pink bra straps. My head still shakes thinking that this poor girl thought that it was an appropriate interview outfit. If only she had taken my class! This lesson is to help students prepare their interview and resume writing skills. If you’re looking for more on dressing for an interview take a look at this lesson.

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Importance of Family TIME

Fact is life is super BUSY for most families!! A lot of families are trying to juggle their time between family and careerdreamstimefree_259444.family.time obligations, household responsibilities and personal needs. Sometimes, as parents, we find it challenging to find balance in this process in order to have precious quality time left over to spend with the important people in our lives. This lesson helps students understand the importance of quality time with little ones by using a variety of illustrations and activities.

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Frozen Pizza Comparison, Ingredient Investigation & Makeover Challenge

Teaching teenagers about nutrition and consumer skills can be difficult except when it involves pizza! Americans eat a frozen.pizzaton of pizza on a regular basis because it doesn’t require much time or effort and because it’s fairly easy on the wallet as well. However, do students really know which frozen pizza is the best as far as taste and money is concerned, what’s inside their favorite frozen pizza, how it’s made or even how to make a frozen pizza healthier? This lesson and all of its parts can be done in their entirety or can be selected in parts….it’s up to you and how much time you want to devote to this lesson and activities.

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Teen Dating Violence

Dating violence is a big problem facing today’s population of young adults. Dating violence knows no boundaries anddating.violence does not discriminate. That’s why it’s important that our teens and young adults be educated about the characteristics and consequences of this all too common problem. The activities in the lesson help convey this information in a very interactive and hands-on approach.

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Tower Team Building Activity

I recently led a team building activity that was really a lot of fun–spaghetti and gum drop tower building. The object of the activity is to work as a team to build the highest tower in the set amount of time. This activity is not only easy to prep, but also fairly inexpensive to put together.

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The Shopping Challenge Lesson

#182153373 / gettyimages.com   This lesson allows students to create a two week menu and shopping list that will include all of the food and beverage items they will need to survive two weeks without starving or becoming dehydrated. To…

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Birthday Party Project

There are times throughout the year that I need some “filler” activities due to testing schedules, the loss of seniors partybecause of graduation, etc. I don’t want to give my students free periods so I came up with a practical, creative project of planning a child’s birthday party. Originally this project was designed for my child development class as a team building activity but it could be used in a family unit as well. While this project is just about planning a party and the concepts that go with it, and fit into my time frame, you could easily adapt this project and make it relate to budgeting by giving students price limits or even make it a competition and incorporate a “cupcake wars” style approach. Either way students enjoy planning parties!

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