Gross Life Skills

Like everyone else, our kids are doing school at home which means a little more free time for my kids since all the extra-curriculars have been cancelled. My life, however, has gotten a lot busier because my youngest child needs a lot of supervision and help with her schoolwork. I've given up on the family history class I was auditing because I just don't have much time to myself to work on the assignments. Plus the teacher wasn't grading them anyway...but that's a different subject.

A little cup pong ball

Talmage's sculpture project: make a figurine with found objects

Anyway, one mom I know has been keeping her kids a little busier by giving them lessons in things you need to be able to do in your adult life, aka life skills. Lessons she mentioned were cleaning the refrigerator, addressing envelopes, and cleaning the car inside and out. I'm all about teaching my kids life skills but I've been having trouble fitting that into my schedule with all the schoolwork. So today I thought, we'll do it at night when Scott is home to help!

So tonight's life skill was cleaning out the sink drain! You know how the sink drain can slow down when too much gunk builds up. My husband doesn't like to use the highly toxic chemicals to clean it out so this is the disgusting organic method. And it truly is gross.

The Post-Life Skills Treat

Comments

Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...

Hansen Family Reunion 2024, Thursday afternoon

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.

2024 Hansen Family Reunion, Wednesday

Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...

Search This Blog