Nobel Prize Lessons for Kids of All Ages

The Nobel prizes are being awarded this week. Unlike many of the other prizes that our culture celebrates the Nobel prizes are based on a lifetime of work. That makes the winners older than most of the people your children look up to as role models but these are people who can teach all of us about persistence, dedication, working hard, working long, believing in yourself and persevering even when everyone tells you not to.

Life Skills Lesson Ideas:

1. Clip the listings of the Nobel prize winners and choose a few minutes during the day or week to talk to your children about them.


2. Note the obstacles that the person had to face in life and talk about the ways they overcame them.

For example, Dr. Mario R. Capecchi one of the Nobel Prize winners in medicine was left on his own at age 4 (yes 4!!) when his mother was taken to Dachau. He managed to survive on the streets and in orphanages for the next 5 years.

Dr. Martin Evans says about his Nobel win in medicine that like Dr. Capecchi "his scientific career was an upward struggle. In an interview with the Lasker Foundation, Dr. Evans said recognition was important to him because he often was a lone scientist who cried out against the consensus. In applying for grants, he said he was told many of his ideas were premature and could not be done.

“Then five years later,” he said, “I find everyone is doing the same thing.”

Doris Lessing who won the Nobel prize in Literature never graduated high school, she self-taught by being a voracious reader.

Did any of these people give up? No they did not.

3. Talk about perseverance with your children. Ask them about times that they've felt they just wanted to give up on something but didn't. What did they learn from that experience? How might they apply it in the future?

4. Our society focuses on the prize, the award and not on the process of achievement. Discuss with your children the process of achievement. It can be joyous, fun and fulfilling but it can be tough. Practicing the piano scales isn't fun but how else can you learn the notes and how to play them? Baseball practice in the heat when you're striking out might not be fun, but hitting that home run for the team sure is. You can't get one without the other.


Extra Reading: I was happy to contribute to a terrific article that Jeff Bredenberg wrote called "9 Ways to Help Kids Practice" on this topic which was published in Better Homes and Gardens and which you can link to here on MSN - http://lifestyle.msn.com/familyandparenting/raisingkids/articlebhg.aspx?cp-documentid=937235

Enjoy the day and celebrate your achievements big and small - they took work!