50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers: Build Capability + Confidence

A list of 50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers. The benefits and practicalities of intentionally teaching essential life skills to little ones.

Teaching young children practical life skills is a great way to help them build capabilities, grow in confidence, and give them meaningful work in your family team.

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Teaching Life Skills: Beginning with the end in mind

What is the purpose of teaching essential skills to our children?

Vision: Clear direction = Diligence

In our home, my husband and I frequently discuss the legacy we want to leave in raising our family and the capabilities we want to see grow in our children. Having a vision and direction of where we want to go helps keep us motivated, diligent, and inspired on the journey before us. Starting with a clear vision helps us move in the direction of where we want to go as we plan our days as a family.

Children need meaningful work to do

So much is happening in early childhood every day. From physical development to learning the basic skills of personal relationships, and experiencing the world around them, early childhood education is an exponential time of growth.

Outside of the importance of reading together, connection, free play, being outside, and basic nurture needs, our children also benefit from having meaningful work to do in the world.

Young kids often want to feel big. Beginning at a very young age, my little children have always lit up when they can do something independently like their older sibling or help momma with something they haven’t helped with before.

My four-year-old tells me almost daily, “Momma, I am a BIG helper!”, “Yes, you are bud!”

Gradually helping a child learn new life skills, including them in our home tasks throughout the day, and having a plan for teaching them these new things, helps our children to grow in what they are capable of and in turn, grow in confidence.

Family Team

In our home, we also have a family team mindset. Everyone has an important role to play in our home for the benefit of the family. This mindset helps teach our young children the benefits of contribution, teamwork, and the important role each member has in our home.

Teaching basic life skills to 3 to 5-year-olds takes effort and intentional time.

As a mother-teacher, when going about my day, I have trained my mind to think in terms of “what simple tasks can my child help me with in our day?”. If they are next to me while going about my homemaking, what is an important life skill they can participate in while we spend some time together?

Daily Routines

Keeping daily routines as a family and having young children help with daily chores at an early age is a very practical way to teach preschool life skills.

For a look into the practicals of our daily routine with preschoolers, you can check out this article here.

I hope the following list of 50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers can offer a few ideas, inspiration, and different ways to incorporate more life skills during your child’s early years of family life.

Life Skills for Preschoolers: A framework for teaching

With each new skill, one of the best ways we have found to set a child up for success is to use this simple framework for reference.

I encourage you to dedicate as much time as needed to each step, in order, until you feel the child is competent and ready to move to the next stage. I have found that with preschool children, we can live at step 2-4 for a long time.

There are areas of our morning routine for my preschooler where we are still at step 3 after a year of incorporating certain new skills in my child’s daily routine. That is OK! Building healthy habits is worth the time and preschool children often need more of our presence and accountability before independently doing a skill well.

It is a good idea to focus on one new skill at a time until at least step 2 before adding another new skill into the arena. Focusing on putting in their best effort, good attitudes, and consistent practice is great for habits sticking and future success.

Teaching Life Skills for Preschoolers: 5-Step Framework

For each new skill being taught…

Stage 1: I do the task and the child watches me. (this may need to be done several times as well- I often do not catch on to new things perfectly after watching one time)
Stage 2: I do the task and the child helps me.
Stage 3: The child does the task and I help them.
Stage 4: The child does the task and I watch them.
Stage 5: The child does the task and I check the work. (this is a beautiful spot to be with my older children! So worth the effort in the younger years.)

Life Skills for Preschoolers: Setting up the environment

Making sure preschoolers have the tools they need and an environment they can navigate is essential for setting them up for success and independence.

Child appropriate tools

For Small Hands resource- This website has great ideas for tools easy to use for preschoolers.

Other tools for kids that can be handy:

Handheld vacuum
Small pitchers
Toolbox
Child-safe kitchen gadgets (we love this food chopper)
Step stool
Watering can
Gardening tools

Organizing to promote independence

Make sure that preschoolers can actually do what you are asking them to. Can they lift the toy bin to clean up efficiently? Do they have stools to reach the sink? Organizing in such a way to make things easier for our children will help them complete tasks with confidence and avoid frustration.

A Note on Special Needs

A note on this list; if you have a child who has special education needs or other tailored care, please take the principles of including them in the practical life activities that you can in your home and work with them where they are at. The goal is to help the child feel included and grow in capabilities.

Please do not use this list as a measure of what every preschool-aged child “should” be doing.

This list is meant to offer inspiring ideas to help our children grow to the next level of capabilities and confidence. This will look different for every home and every child.

Keeping the love of learning intact, looking at a child’s overall development, and setting up the learning environment to support the child where they are is of utmost importance. You are doing a great job, momma!

With that, here is the list of Life Skills for Preschoolers.

50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers List

Decision-making skills and moral habits are vital for daily life.

Expectations of truthfulness, obedience, and growing in self-control are skills that will be a huge benefit to adulthood and essential for living as a biblical Christian (which is a core value in our home).

I have found that throughout all of the practical daily life activities we do in a day, the deeper set of lessons revolve around these behaviors and attitudes of ourselves and our children.

Patience and grace with small children paired with gentle instruction are important qualities to keep at the forefront of our minds as mothers while simultaneously training in the practical.

I have only been mothering for seven years so I will not give any practical advice here. Still, I do encourage you to operate from the core values and character-building while making beds and doing laundry.

Skills in character + attitudes

Charlotte Mason’s Big 3 Moral Habits

Obedience
Truthfulness
Attention

Other character traits & values to keep in mind:

Respect
Self-control
Humility
Empathy
Patience
Prudence (thinking things through with wisdom)
Piety (reverence)
Best effort

The list of virtues goes on, but you get the gist. Keep your core values in mind.

Personal Hygiene Skills for Preschoolers

Proper dental care (our children brush their own teeth in preschool and we follow up with another proper brush to instruct and check)
Proper hygiene for Bathing
Cleaning up after oneself after using the restroom
Washing hands properly + at the proper times (ie: before eating, after restroom use, before holding a baby, after playing outside, etc)
Changing clothes
Tying their own shoes
Putting dirty clothes in the proper place

Healthy Habits

Comfortable being served healthy foods
Drinking water
Taking vitamins (when given by the parent)
Playing outside
Quiet time rest (practicing habits of rest)

Household Chores for Preschoolers

Putting away dishes (can start this in sections- ie: focus on silverware, then the top rack of the dishwasher, then the full dishwasher, etc.)
Drying dishes
Folding towels
Folding their own clothes
Switching laundry
Putting away their own laundry
Cleaning their room
Sweeping
Spray mop
Vacuuming
Tidying the living room
Feeding pets
Helping put away groceries
Wiping down the table
Making simple meals such as easy hot breakfasts (I help with the stove)
Wiping windows and window sills
Wiping down walls
Helping a younger sibling with these tasks

Clean environments

Learning to appreciate and create clean environments is a great skill for young people. These habits will have a lasting impact on their lives when they move away from their family home.

Equipping children with good habits that become second nature, blesses the home and family as we go about our daily tasks putting in our best effort with good attitudes.

It is so fun to see my preschoolers light up and dive into imaginative play when their play area is clean and easy to navigate. Once they experience that satisfaction, I have found they often initiate keeping it orderly themselves (with an occasional mom touch).

Social Skills for Preschoolers

Communication Skills
Good manners
Respectful facial expressions
Self-control (sitting in church, waiting in a waiting room, knowing how to occupy themselves with quiet activities during these social situations)

Basic Everyday Life Skills for Preschoolers

Time management
Money management
Critical thinking skills
Play (independent play, pretend play, cooperative play)
Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills
Having their own set of tools for helping daddy
Physical education: moving their bodies well, sports education, health

Inspiring Ideas for Preschool Children: Building Life Skills

Being rightly motivated begins with an inspiring idea. Without an inspiring idea and reason for doing so, we can tend to work from a place of drudgery. Here are a few resources to offer some inspiring ideas when implementing these life skills for preschoolers in your family.

Books

Additional resources we have loved:

More articles:

50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers: Build Capability + Confidence

Teaching Life Skills: Beginning with the end in mind