Games to Simulate Life Skills

Series Summary

Teachers play an integral role in the development and education of children. Working in schools, academies or a community setting, a teacher's job focuses on facilitating student learning through lessons and demonstrations. High school teachers, in particular, play an important role in helping prepare students for college and jobs in the real world. All teachers, high school teachers included, face the difficult job of keeping students engaged and excited about learning. In this free video series on life skills, a university campus president explains how to teach life skills to different individuals. Learn to teach life skills to homeschool students, adults, drug abusers and autistic teenagers. Find out how sports help to teach life skills and get tips on teaching life skills to people with down syndrome. Life skills are incredibly important for functioning in society.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Darren Adamson with Argosy University and today I want to talk about games that you can use to simulate life skills. One of the games that simulates life is in fact the game of Life. It really gives those who are playing it the opportunity to experience different aspects of life like finding a mate, buying a car, making decisions that are of a financial nature. Another game that's similar to that is Monopoly. Another game that is very helpful in teaching life skills is the game called Skedoo where an individual that's playing that game has to turn over either cards that represent a particular thing and find the matches. It's really helpful to develop some ability to think, ability to think through problems and to pay attention and memorize or remember. Another one is PayDay, very similar to the realities of life and trying to earn a living. Those are life skills that are very important for any of us to learn because that's the way life is structured. There are many other games that really teach life skills about interaction such as the game of Twister that people have to interact in a very physical way and that teaches social interaction skills. Another game that's very helpful in terms of social interaction is the game of Charades. You also don't need a board game to play that where you get to act out certain things and try to get people to guess them. It teaches social interaction because clearly one has to stand in front of their peers but also it teaches social interaction in that one succeeds, people guess, it's fun. People enjoy one another's company, that's a very important life skill. There are many, many other games that one can use to simulate life skills. The important thing in choosing a game that simulates a life skill is to determine what life skill is being taught or what life skill is desired to be learned and then choose a game that is very specific to that particular life skill. For more information, contact me through argosy.edu. Look for the Salt Lake City campus website and call me at that phone number."