Encouraging Your Kids to Be Resourceful
The dictionary definition of resourcefulness is “the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.” Don’t we all want that ability? Here you’ll find practical suggestions and specific materials to help you teach resourcefulness to kids.
These suggestions will help instill in your child the importance of resourcefulness in solving problems and encourage them to try creative solutions without self-criticizing.
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Character Trait of the Month List
Each month, as part of our homeschool learning, I choose a specific character trait to focus attention on. There are many character traits worth pursuing, but given the timeline of the school year, I narrowed my list down to ten.
3 Simple Ways to Encourage Resourcefulness
First, allow them to make mistakes and learn from them. Let them try a solution and discover for themselves that it doesn’t work.
Second, encourage their effort and hard work instead of telling them how smart they are. If they haven’t yet, your kids will surely encounter problems that stump them. They need to believe that they are capable of learning new things and solving hard problems if they continue to work at it. Kids who believe their abilities are tied to a fixed level of intelligence will give up more easily when they are presented with an obstacle or new problem.
And finally, model resourcefulness yourself. Let them know that you aren’t sure how to fix something and look up a YouTube video tutorial explaining how to do it. Find a substitution for buttermilk in your pancake recipe when you don’t have buttermilk in the fridge. Talk to them—age-appropriately—about everyday problems you encounter and how you can solve them. Include them in discussions of emergency preparedness for power outages or fires. Help them see that creative thinking and a willingness to learn will prepare them to handle many of the obstacles life will inevitably present to them.
Teaching Resourcefulness with Quotes and Questions
Here are a few quotes about resourcefulness, along with questions you can use to engage your kids in conversation or use as a writing assignment or journal prompt.
I do believe that out of adversity comes incredible resourcefulness.
Phil Keoghan
Question: Do you agree? Can you think of any examples of someone who created something amazing despite tough circumstances?
Resourcefulness: Seeing where you want to go and taking the first step.
Nick Reese
Question: How does this idea relate to the dictionary definition of resourcefulness (the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties)?
Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
Ernest Hemingway
Question: How does this mindset shift in approach to a problem affect your ability to solve it? Is it helpful to think about what you do not have?
It’s not about your resources, it’s about your resourcefulness.
Tony Robbins
Question: Do you agree? Can you overcome anything despite a lack of resources?
More Resourcefulness Quotes
Here are a few additional quotes about resourcefulness you may wish to consider as alternatives, or use in addition to the four above. These quotes don’t necessarily use the word resourcefulness, but the ideas behind these quotations are all related to the same concept.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
We have to do the best we know how at the moment; if it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
Resourcefulness News Articles and Reports
Here are a few sources for news articles containing stories of human resourcefulness and ingenuity. One way to teach resourcefulness to kids is to show them specific examples of it in action.
News for Kids
Newsforkids.net is a great resource for news articles written specifically for kids.
NASA’s Perseverance set to land on Mars: Space exploration is a tremendous example of resourcefulness by people who are doing things no one has ever done before.
Scientists read letter without opening it: a great example of scientists thinking about how to solve the problem of preserving old documents from damage, while still being able to discover their contents.
DOGO News
Another source for kid-friendly news articles is dogonews.com
When Life Gives You Oranges…Make Electricity? This article discusses how a waste item (too many oranges) is being used to produce something of great value (electricity).
The Heartwarming Story Behind Nike’s First Hands-Free Sneaker: This story has so many inspiring pieces. We can only imagine the amount of resourcefulness it has taken for the boy with cerebral palsy to overcome many of his physical challenges. Plus the resourcefulness of the designers and engineers to create a functional hands-free sneaker.
Books that Explore Resourcefulness
These books explore the theme of resourcefulness through engaging stories. How the Ladies Stopped the Wind and Something from Nothing are suitable for all ages. The Trumpet of the Swan and My Side of the Mountain are geared for older elementary age kids.
Short Video Content Related to Resourcefulness
These links are videos I added to my kids’ Google classrooms during March to keep them thinking about resourcefulness.
Homemade Spacecraft/Space Balloon (The Kid Should See This): Amazing video of a homemade balloon sent into earth’s upper atmosphere with a camera.
The Psychology of Problem Solving (YouTube – Edward Oneill): 8-minute video discussing three problems that require out-of-the-box thinking and an ability to see beyond what’s right in front of you.
Hopi Dryland Farming (The Kid Should See This): Phenonenal example of resourcefulness by the Hopi people growing corn in the Arizona desert.
Movies with a Resourcefulness Theme
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is an excellent movie based on the true story of a 13 year-old boy in Malawi, Africa whose wind turbine allows his famine-stricken village to irrigate their crops.
Apollo 13 is such a great example of how resourcefulness is essential to solving problems of enormous magnitude. The scene where NASA engineers dump a pile of items on the table with the directive to put a square peg in a round hole using duct tape and cardboard is iconic.
MacGyver isn’t technically a movie, but this TV series from the 80s created a new word that we still use in reference to resourcefulness. We know what someone means when they say they are going to “MacGyver” a solution. You can find the series on several online streaming platforms.
How to Teach Resourcefulness with Activities
Try some of these activities as a way to teach your kids how to be resourceful. You don’t need a formal lesson plan; you simply need to allow them to use their knowledge of the world so far to make inferences about what they can do.
Out-of-the-box Thinking
Give your kids the opportunity to come up with new ideas by having them list creative ways to use everyday items. Choose from the following list of familiar household objects and have them brainstorm as many ideas as possible. Remember: there are no wrong answers!
- paper clip
- cardboard box
- plastic straw
- big pink eraser
- kitchen sponge
- plastic water bottle
- cupcake liner
- sock
- cardboard toilet paper roll
- paper grocery bag
If you don’t have the right equipment for the job, you just have to make it yourself.
MacGyver
Kids in the Kitchen
When you don’t have a dinner plan, involve your kids in making a meal out of whatever you find in the fridge. Don’t worry about following a recipe exactly (unless you’re baking!) and think about what you can pull together using the items you have on hand.
Reuse & Recycle
The next time you intend to throw something away, ask your kids if they can think of any other uses for it. An old toy, an empty spice container, a book with torn pages. Not everything we throw away necessarily needs to be tossed.
Also, the next time you need something: a system to organize supplies under your kitchen sink, a way to keep the dog from tracking mud onto the floor in the winter—give your kids a chance to think about how they might repurpose something you already own before buying a specific item.
Resourcefulness Scriptures
As Christians, this is an area where we need to be careful that we don’t put too much emphasis on our own capabilities without the acknowledgment that God holds our very breath in his hands. However, we do see evidence of resourcefulness in scripture.
One of my favorite examples of this is in the story of Joseph. God gives Joseph advance knowledge of the approaching famine in Egypt, and Joseph instructs the Pharoah to store up grain now to be prepared for when the famine comes. You can read this story in Genesis 41.
In the book of Ruth, the title character accompanies her mother-in-law to a foreign land and exhibits resourcefulness in feeding them by gleaning crops from the fields.
And of course, we have the Proverbs 31 woman, who plants a vineyard, makes clothing, and generally gets things done.
We can know that God intends for us to use the resources and abilities he gives us to the very best of our abilities, seeking to learn and grow ourselves with the goal of blessing and helping others.
Free Printable Resourcefulness Quotes and Questions
By subscribing to my mailing list, you have access to my printables library, where you can download a free printable list of these four quotes and accompanying questions. Use them as discussion questions, a writing assignment, or journal prompts.
Join my mailing list to receive updates when new printable resources are added to the library, plus tips and encouragement for your organized homeschool journey.
Visit my homeschool resources page for monthly unit study ideas, projects, and homeschool planning help!
How You Can Teach Resourcefulness to Kids
If you want to teach resourcefulness to your kids, you should let them make mistakes, encourage effort over perfection, and model resourcefulness yourself. You can emphasize the value of resourcefulness by sharing quotes, stories, and movies that exemplify the positive aspects of learning to think creatively and persevere in problem-solving. And finally, you can offer specific, tangible activities for your kids to participate in that will help them practice resourcefulness for themselves.
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March Character Trait Focus: Resourcefulness
