Ask a family member or friend to describe their favourite place to you, like the seaside, a park, or a house. Without seeing any pictures, draw what you hear based on their description.
Extension: Swap roles! You describe something for someone else to draw. How similar is their drawing to what you imagined?
Getting Started: How can you make sure you are listening carefully?
Intermediate: What does it mean to summarise what you have heard?
Advanced: Why is summarising or rephrasing what you have heard useful sometimes?
Mastery: How might changing the language (words) used affect how you feel about something?
Work with other people in your household or a group of friends to build a landmark that has significance to you as a family or as a friendship group.
You should:
- Discuss and agree on a landmark that you will build
- Consider how you are going to build it, what materials do you already have that you could use?
- Divide up the work so that everyone has something to do
- Finally, build your landmark.
Extension: Afterwards, as a group reflect on what you have created. What worked really well? How could it be improved?
Getting Started: When do you find it easier (or more difficult) to work with others in a positive way?
Intermediate: Have you helped make decisions with others?
Advanced: How can you encourage others to help out too?
Mastery: What is an 'unhelpful conflict'? How can you avoid this when working with others?
Ask members of your family or friends about their strengths and talents and create a poster to celebrate the strengths of your family or friendship group.
You could ask:
- Which essenital skills are their strengths
- Any specific examples of when their strengths have shone through
- If they have any hidden talents.
Extension: Include yourself on the poster.
Getting Started: How can you find out about how others are feeling about something?
Intermediate: How can you find out more about strengths and weaknesses in others?
Advanced: How might you be able to motivate others to improve their weaknesses?
Mastery: What kind of leader would you like to be?
Set a goal that you would like to achieve in the next few weeks or months of the year.
You should:
- Consider the steps your will need to take to reach your goal
- Consider how long it will take you to reach your goal
- Consider how you are going to track this goal
- Design a goal tracker - this could be written or drawn.
Extension: Share your goal and your tracker with members of your family or friends, they might even have some suggestions to help you reach your goal.
Getting Started: How do you know if something is too difficult for you?
Intermediate: Why is it important to be willing to take on new challenges?
Advanced: What resources might you need to achieve your goals?
Mastery: What steps do you need to put in place to make your goals happen?
Affirmations are positive statements that can help people feel better when they are having negative thoughts or are feeling negative emotions.
Think about a challenge that you are facing and write down five affirmations (positive statements) that help you to think about this challenge positively. Your statements (or affirmations) can help you stay positive more generally and can be as simple as: 'I can do hard things' or 'I am a good friend'.
You should:
- Write down your affirmations.
- Say your affirmations aloud to yourself or a friend or a family member.
Extension:
Create a poster with your affirmations on to remind you of them regularly.
Getting Started: How does this activity make you feel?
Intermediate: How could you use this activity to feel more positive when something goes wrong?
Advanced: How could this help you to look on the bright side of something?
Mastery: How can you manage your emotional response to best support others?
Imagine you are a designer for a car company. You have been asked to come up with ideas for a brand new range of cars/vehicles that are environmentally friendly. You should generate ideas and design at least two different types of car (for example, a sports car, pick-up truck, luxury car, convertible, electric car).
You could:
- Draw the different cars, making sure the drawings include specific features
- Label the features of the car
- Highlight what makes these cars better for the environment.
Extension: Write down why you think your designs make great cars – how are they different from what already exists?
Getting Started: How can you share what you imagine?
Intermediate: How can you come up with lots of different ideas?
Advanced: How can you combine different ideas to create new ones?
Mastery: How can you help someone else to be creative?
Consider this problem: a town has an area of land that is abandoned and is no longer being used for anything. It has become untidy, littered wasteland. You have been chosen to completely change the space and design something that will make the town a better place.
You should:
- Consider the options, come up with three different ideas to solve the problem
- Choose the best option - this should be the one you think the most people will like
- Design the new area, this could be written, drawn, typed.
- Pitch the idea to your friends and family
Extension: Go back to your design, look at the resources that you will need to create it and decide how you can do this in the most environmentally friendly way.
Getting Started: What are the instructions?
Intermediate: How can you come up with lots of possible solutions?
Advanced: Why is it important to consider a range of solutions for problems?
Mastery: How might you choose between different solutions to a complex problem?
You are the new radio host of the brand new radio show Skills Builder FM. Your role is to host the first session live in front of either family members or friends.
Decide:
- If you would like to host the show with anyone else.
- What the topic of the show is going to be – it can be anything you're interested in, such as sports, fashion, celebrities, news, science, art, a hidden talent... anything!
- If you want any special guests to talk on your show.
Consider:
- How you are going to engage listeners using your tone and expression.
Extension: Ask your listeners for feedback. For example, what did they like about your show? Is there anything you could improve for next time?
Getting Started: How do we know if we are speaking clearly?
Intermediate: As you speak how can put your points into a logical order so you can be easily understood?
Advanced: How can you use tone, expression and gesture to make your speaking engaging?
Mastery: How can you adapt the content of what you are saying, in response to listeners?
