Often, big things come in small packages. That's certainly true for Marian Latzo's "micropedia." In about 125-pages, it gives teens a surprisingly comprehensive and practical introduction to the basic skills they'll need when living on their own.
The book covers managing your money, living in your own living space, and taking care of your health in detail. For example, managing money addresses how to budget money and make it last, how to use and manage bank accounts, things to know about credit, and insurance protection. This is definitely the kind of book that will be scribbled on and dog-eared. Teens are encouraged to go where they need to when they need to.
As the author herself points out, and the book truly reflects, the book was written by a conscientious mom who spent a lot of time working on teaching her kids life skills. Every topic teaches the essential components of a skill as it guides teens through the practical thinking and planning process for that skill. Let's take a look, for example, at the first topic on "Budgeting to Make Money Stretch." The first step involves a simple mapping out of your short, medium, and long-term financial goals.
These are simply explained and then sketched out on blank forms for teens to fill in. Step 2 is checking your income by listing revenues from different possible sources and across different time periods. Step 3 does the same for expenses. Once the two sides of the budget are documented, Step 4 involves looking at possible ways to cut expenses to meet your budget. Step 5 puts it all together in a 3-month financial plan. The final touch is evaluating, over the next year, whether the budget is working or not. Each step has useful forms, lists, diagrams, or insights that make it usable for the teen.
The micropedia workbook can be accompanied by the popular "I'm Getting Ready" supplement that includes a compilation of brief activities for teens. Parents and teachers will find this particularly useful for getting teens to practice the skills. The activities are organized into the same general topics as the micropedia, but this is not a structured curriculum with a lot of instruction for how to implement the activities. Instead, parents and teachers can have fun picking from among the activities and using a little creativity in how and when they use them. That's what this approach is really all about: really getting youth going on what they need to know about living on their own.
