How to Adult: 101 Life Skills for High School Students Vol 2
101 more real-world topics to help students prepare for life after high school.
How to Adult: 101 Life Lessons, Volume 2 includes 101 ready-to-teach mini-lessons covering practical skills, situations, and responsibilities students may encounter in adulthood.
Use them as bell ringers, warm-ups, advisory activities, transition activities, discussion starters, or anytime you have a few extra minutes and want to make them count.
There’s no need to teach all 101 topics or work through them in order. Choose what fits your students, your curriculum, and the time you have available.
Try 10 Adulting 101 Mini-Lessons for Free
Want to see what the mini-lessons are like before purchasing? Try 10 free Adulting 101 mini-lessons, with one topic from each category. You can use them with your students and see how they work in your classroom.
Real-World Skills for Life After High School
There are so many things we expect young adults to figure out eventually.
How do you know what to do when your credit card is lost? What exactly is an Explanation of Benefits? How do you safely pull over on the side of the road? What should you know before signing a lease? And what do you do when the toilet won't stop running?
How to Adult, Volume 2 gives you a way to introduce these kinds of practical topics before your students need them.
The 101 mini-lessons cover ten areas of adult life:
Repairs & Maintenance • Work & Community Life • Car Care & Driving • Travel & Transportation • Documents & Life Admin • Money & Consumer Skills • Health & Wellness • Safety & Emergencies • Food & Kitchen • Housing
Students might learn how to check their engine oil one day, talk about marketing tricks the next, and explore passport basics, fire extinguishers, home security, prescription medications, or the real cost of owning a pet later in the year.
The goal isn't for students to leave high school knowing everything about adulthood, but instead to help them build useful background knowledge and get comfortable with figuring things out!
101 Mini-Lessons. Use Them Your Way.
One of my favorite things about How to Adult is how easy it is to fit into the time you already have.
Each topic is designed as a short, stand-alone mini-lesson. Many work well in about 5–10 minutes, while others can lead to a longer conversation when students have questions or experiences to share.
Try them as:
Bell ringers or daily warm-ups
Advisory or homeroom activities
Transition activities
End-of-class wrap-ups
Weekly life skills discussions
Meaningful activities for unexpected extra time
Starting points for deeper lessons or student research
You can work through the presentation in order, use the clickable table of contents to jump to whatever fits that day, or let students help choose what they want to learn about next.
You Don't Have to Be an Expert on 101 Topics
I created these mini-lessons to be easy for teachers to pick up and use, even when it’s a topic you don’t know much about yourself.
Every slide includes built-in speaker notes with additional teacher support. Depending on the topic, you may find background information, discussion questions, examples, teaching tips, optional activities, videos, or links to helpful resources.
That means you don't have to spend your prep period researching IRAs, rip currents, car batteries, notarized documents, water shut-off valves, or any of the other topics that come up in class..
Pull up a topic, look over the notes, and you're ready to start the conversation.
Everything You Need to Get Started
How to Adult, Volume 2 includes more than the 101 mini-lesson slides. You'll also get:
Editable Google Slides + PowerPoint
All 101 mini-lessons are included in both formats, and the slide text is editable so you can make changes for your students or teaching context.
Teacher Instructions & Built-In Speaker Notes
Teacher notes provide additional context, discussion questions, examples, teaching ideas, videos, and helpful resources. Teacher instructions include ideas for using the mini-lessons as warm-ups, discussion starters, transition activities, or whenever you have a few extra minutes.
Clickable Table of Contents
Jump straight to the topic you want instead of scrolling through more than 100 slides.
Student Checklist & Organizer
Students can track the topics they've explored and identify areas they want to learn more about, practice, or research. They can also record notes, questions, resources, and next steps as they work through different topics. Over time, those pages can become their own Adulting Toolkit.
How to Adult, Volume 1 or Volume 2?
You don't need to start with Volume 1.
Each collection includes 101 different adulting topics, and there is no required sequence. Choose the volume that works best for your students, or use them together for 202 real-world topics you can pull from throughout the school year.
How to Adult, Volume 1
101 practical life skills covering personal finance, housing, employment, health, relationships, communication, household skills, and more.
How to Adult, Volume 2
101 completely different topics, with more everyday situations involving home maintenance, car care, travel, consumer skills, safety, health, life admin, and more.
Get All 202 Topics
The How to Adult Bundle includes both volumes, giving you 202 different mini-lessons to choose from throughout the school year.
Looking for More Adulting Skills to Teach?
Not sure how to fit life skills into an already-full school day?
I've put together 101 Adulting Warm-Ups to Teach Life Skills with ideas for using adulting topics as quick warm-ups, discussion starters, journal prompts, extra-time activities, and more.
Whether you use How to Adult or create your own mini-lessons, you don't need an entire life skills course to start teaching practical skills. Even five or ten minutes can introduce something useful and get students talking.
Ready to Bring More Real-World Life Skills Into Your Classroom?
