Ever since my other post on

what I am peparing my kids for I have been thinking more on it, and while I am daunted by the task of preparing them ofr a career, any career. I am hopefull that I can prepare them for the garanteed neccessary skills.

I can practically (mostly) gurantee that my children will need the following skills:

1. cooking, might be over an open flame in Africa, might be gormet, might be just nuke it and go. but I can practically gurantee they will do some cooking. Along with that is....

2. nutrition Very few people have a nutritionalist picking out their meals, instead we choose our own prefferences, and hopefully at least some of them are in the relm of healthy.

3. finances I might not be able to hand over millions and some stock investments, but I can help them learn how to manage what they have (so that they always have something to manage)

4. negotiation/comprimise all relationships take comprimise, sharing toys or couchspace, or work. It all takes effrt.

5. work ethic whatever the job, my children will need to chose to do it well.

6. reading Not just "read this cause I said so", but the voluntary reading to learn somthing desired.

7. housekeeping getting all the work done in a house requires comprimise and planning, plus some prioritizing.

None of this is well taught in a classroom setting, but all of it is used near daily with my children. We negotiate when toys sqabbles come up, or when work must mix with fun. We read to find answers to many questions, we also read just because. We discuss why we eat what we eat and why we seek variety. We talk about why the lights don't need to be on when not in a room, or why we use fans not the AC for so long. We talk about what work around the house must get done every day and what can wait a bit. We talk about dillegence, and completing tasks that we start. And much more.

And yet in the midst of all this we pick up trivia, it isn't really a life skill to know that 'school' used to mean 'free time' in the origional Greek, but it is fun to know. I doubt any of my kids will need the information that ancient Egypt used a wooden right angle to make proper corners. I actually doubt that all three will need to know what all the angles are (according to JC when you have two sticks to make an acute angle it is an A..A for acute!), but hey we read about it we talked about it, and today we are playing with bread (cut off crust, eat, then cut off to make a pentagon, or hexagon or whatever... octagon sandwhiches anyone? maybe topped with 8 different toppings! hmmm maybe it would be easier to stick with a triangle!)