Lesson 004 – Bare Necessities

This weeks life lesson comes from page 27 of the book “10-Minute Life Lessons for Kids”.

This lesson is basically a lesson in “what is really important”.  According to the author, it will “help you talk with your family about establishing priorities with your time, your focus, and your finances.  It will also help you discuss making wise choices and creating balance in life.”

The lesson involves asking each child “Other than air, water, and sun, what are five things that would be hard to live without?”  We had the kids write their answers on “post-it” notes and stick them randomly on a board.  We had to prompt them a little to encourage them to not just write down the “stuff” they couldn’t live without but also the people and intangible things they wouldn’t want to live without, like family, friends, love, etc.

We had company over so there were 6 kids and 2 adults which resulted in many duplicate answers.  We grouped the duplicates into piles so they would be represented only one time each.  For example, if three different kids answered “Nintendo” we stacked those “post-it” notes into one pile so “Nintendo” was only represented one time.

After that we asked each person, one at a time go up and pick something to move to the top of the board that they could live without and explain why they thought that thing should be removed from the list.  We took turns doing this until all that was left were the real “bare necessities” (I think each person ended up removing 2 “post-it” notes).

At that point I showed the children that pretty much all that was left were people (and God).  We discussed that we think at first glance that there are certain things we can’t live without but when we stop and think about it we realize that there are other things (people) that are really more important to us.

I think all of the kids, even the younger ones, got something out of the lesson.  It didn’t take long, the kids stayed engaged, and the lesson generated a lot of interesting and beneficial conversation.  If you are interested in an example, here is a picture of our “board” near the end of the lesson:

PS – If you are wondering why “Heart” was removed, we all agreed you can’t live without a heart so it falls in the category “air, water, and sun”.  Also, Happy is the name of our dog.