Training our children in the ways of the Lord should be the primary focus of our day. Of equal importance is to train our children, especially our daughters, in the art of homemaking and household management as they embark on raising the next generation.

Over the last six weeks my 15 year-old daughter and I have been working through the Home Economics Household and Personal Management Skills book. This softcover paperback makes it easy to train up your daughter in the art of home and personal care. This curriculum is presented in a weekly format and provides you with everything needed to teach the course over one semester, 18 weeks.

Each week includes several bulleted tasks and activities to reinforce the skill being taught. This course covers all areas of daily life tasks, from cleaning, to decluttering, and organizing your home or room in the teen case. Your child will also learn about personal goal setting and safety tips. Week one takes your teen through the process of thoroughly cleaning and decluttering their room. The child goes through the process step by step, working in a clockwise fashion until the room is completely decluttered and clean. Everything from the walls to the blinds are cleaned and decluttered.

This book is designed to precede another course, Kitchen Skills. In this book, Kitchen Skills, your daughter will learn all about the ends and outs of the kitchen and the art of healthy living. Since everyone needs to eat, it is best to learn and practice these needed skills over and over before someone else is relying on you for their next meal. Starting at the beginning and learning the basics of the kitchen and how to cook some basic meals will go a long way when your child is out on her own or entering into marriage. This book provides lots of hands-on activities to try your hand at making simple meals like lunches, breads, cakes, and more.

We initially started to use these books as prescribed, but soon realized that we would like to focus on the kitchen aspects earlier than next year. So, to accommodate this we have been alternating weeks within both books. This has worked out great for us as my daughter was very eager to learn all about cooking and kitchen skills and didn’t want to wait until next second semester to do so. Alternating books has helped keep her focused on the tasks too and not get too tied down focusing on one aspect of homemaking.

I too learned a thing or two in the process of going through these books with my daughter. I especially appreciated the tried and true all natural cleaning supply recipes because I have been wanting to switch from the store bought chemical laden cleaners and the meal recipes and ideas provided. Making sure my daughter is prepared to leave the nest for college and beyond is important to me and with a solid home economics curriculum like these two books I can be confident that she will be proficient in keeping the home and managing life skills while out on her own.

We will be continuing these books through completion and even though it gives her a checkmark for an elective for her transcript these are valuable skills that cannot be passed up. I am looking forward to going through these again when my 13 year-old daughter reaches 9^th grade in effort to start preparing her as well.

-Product review by Jacquelin Caffey, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, September, 2016