Our complete curriculum for personal presentation covers everything students need to maintain their clothes, dress like fully composed adults, care for their personal hygiene, and otherwise present themselves well.
What is Personal Presentation?
As we’ve previously described, proper development of life skills is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of any graduate. Whereas most schools (including many homeschools) ignore or barely cover this topic, the Destination Method devotes an entire academic subject – called “Adulthood” – to the study of essential skills for everyday life.
Among these skills is the ability to respectably present oneself to the world via well-maintained clothing, good personal hygiene, and a basic sense of appropriate style for casual and professional events. Although virtually no schools bother to teach this topic, its importance is indisputable within the context of many of life’s most formative activities, including interviewing for a job, going on a date, working in a professional environment, attending weddings and other ceremonies, and simply interacting with the surrounding community. The common assumption that children will just “figure it out” on their own isn’t good enough: many never will, and the rest will never achieve the same level of confidence that they could have reached if someone had been kind enough to serve as a guide.
Ignorance can be a Financial Drain
To a rapidly increasing degree, knowledge of personal presentation can also help students avoid major consumer pitfalls. The rampant inflation of the last several years has made clothing and personal care products much more expensive, while simultaneously, the quality of many brands has suffered. Making matters worse, “fast fashion” – the idea that clothes are only meant to be worn a handful of times before being replaced – has become the norm among young people. Many youths don’t know how to evaluate quality in clothing, and are easily fooled into purchasing cheap fast fashion products that are designed to break quickly. By spending a bit of time learning about how to cost-effectively plan and acquire a wardrobe, your child will be able to save serious money in the long-term.
Topics Covered
Our curriculum covers the following topics:
- Cleaning and maintaining clothes
- Mending clothes
- Assessing clothing quality
- Types of textiles
- Planning a wardrobe
- Basic skincare
- Personal hygiene
- Dental care
- Shaving (for young men)
- Makeup and cosmetics (for young women)
- … and much more.
Curriculum Overview
Our curriculum consists of the following components:
- Multiple instructional YouTube playlists
- Free worksheets to assist in planning a wardrobe
- Clothing repair practice
- Optional embroidery training
The Playlists
We’ve gathered more than 20 hours of useful instructional content on YouTube that discuss each of the topics of this course in great detail. Because many elements of personal presentation are gender-specific, we’ve divided these videos into three separate playlists:
- The Main Playlist, which is intended for viewing by all students. Many of these videos are from male-focused or female-focused channels, but everything we’ve included is expected to be useful in some capacity for both young men and young women.
- A Supplemental Playlist for Young Men, which contains information that is specific to males, including beard shaving and men’s formalwear.
- A Supplemental Playlist for Young Women, which contains information that is specific to females, including cosmetics and women’s formalwear.
Students should begin their study of personal presentation by watching the Main Playlist, followed by the appropriate supplemental playlist.
The Worksheets
After students have finished watching the playlists, they should begin performing the tasks described in these worksheets. The worksheets are designed to help students clean their wardrobe and evaluate it for potential areas of improvement. At the end, we recommend taking your child on a shopping trip to locate any items that are needed.
Mending Practice
Our playlists include detailed videos about how to repair damaged clothing, and we strongly recommend that children follow these videos with some hands-on repair practice. We suggest looking through everyone’s closets for torn or otherwise damaged clothing, and having your child mend each garment. Of course, this will require that you have a basic sewing kit in the house. If you don’t already have one, you can purchase a cheap but functional hand sewing kit for $8.99 (not a sponsored link).
Embroidery Practice
To further exercise the sewing skills necessary for clothing repair, we suggest that students spend some time learning embroidery. There is significant overlap between the types of stitches used to repair clothes and the types of stitches used in embroidery, so we find that this craft has considerably more practical value than most. Although not strictly necessary for completion of this curriculum, this will greatly reinforce your child’s mending skills, and make simple clothing repairs seem trivial.
The simplest way to get started with embroidery is to purchase a beginner’s embroidery kit. There are many options available online. One that we like can be found here, for $16.99 (not a sponsored link).
Alternatively, you can find plenty of free embroidery guides on the internet. In particular, the website I Heart Stitch Art has some nice beginner patterns available free of charge. Keep in mind that you’ll still need basic embroidery tools, including embroidery hoops and thread. If you don’t already have fabric, you can tear up some old t-shirts.
Completing a few embroidery projects will give your child tangible proof of their newfound sewing skills, which is always a huge confidence boost! They might even have fun along the way.
