‘Skills For Life’ Guide

Muzicbug has been developed to bring awareness and teach young children important ‘life skills’ which assists the building of confidence and the development of a strong sense of self.

Psychological research shows that building confidence and self esteem are integral to strong, long term mental health and building a constructive life.

Muzicbug is the creation of Melbourne based clinical psychologist Dr Rebecca Meaney and former primary school teacher and musician, Leighton Smith. Combined, Rebecca and Leighton have over 40 years experience working with Australian children.

The ‘life skills’ featured in the book and animation series are listed below. Each one has an introduction to the life skill and an overview of the importance of the skill. To get a better understanding and to embellish the meaning of these skills, the Muzicbug picture book series provides some simple day to day activities that you can do with your child to practice and reinforce these ‘skills for life.’ Through positive reinforcement, children are encouraged to participate and practice these positive behaviours so they become habitual.

Muzicbug 20 ‘Skills For Life’

  • Being Active
  • Never Giving Up
  • Teamwork
  • Setting Goals
  • Sharing
  • Being Brave
  • Making Extra Effort
  • Being Organised
  • Caring For The World
  • Working Hard
  • Caring For Your Things
  • Being Strong
  • Making Friends
  • Being Reliable
  • Joining In
  • Kindness To Others
  • Making Decisions
  • Giving It A Go
  • Being Yourself
  • Being A Leader

Our Story

Leighton, a former school teacher, always wanted to create a series of picture story books that would have purpose and meaning and engage children whilst helping them to learn to read. As well as a way to encourage young children to learn a musical instrument, which has research proven benefits to academic, social and emotional skills.

Rebecca, a clinical psychologist, always wanted to help bring awareness to children of important social and emotional life skills such as being organised, sharing, making friends, being kind and caring for the world. She sees the development of these fundamental life skills at an early age to have life changing benefits throughout a child’s lifetime.

So together they created Muzicbug. The arrival of the successful Muzicbug picture story and audio books was followed by the Muzicbug You Tube channel featuring the unique music and nursery rhyme animations.
Together, through their very musical bugs, their aim is to bring awareness of important life skills and help promote musical instrument learning and playing.

The Muzicbug Series

Ferdi Fly & the Flamenco Guitar

LIFE SKILL #1 BEING ACTIVE

Physical activity has benefits for children beyond those of fitness. Keeping active also assists children to manage stress and anxiety, improve their mood, and enhance their sense of self-efficacy.

A physically active child is a healthy child. Research also shows that regular physical activity can boost our self-esteem, mood and sleep quality, making us less prone to stress, anxiety and depression.

Physically active children learn better and studies have proven that health benefits associated with physical activity include cardiovascular and muscular fitness, bone health, psychosocial outcomes, and cognitive and brain health.

Bella Butterfly & the Harp

LIFE SKILL #2 NEVER GIVING UP

Persistence is integral to personal success and accomplishment. Encouraging persistence in children promotes the ability to continue through life’s challenges. In turn, children who are able to persist through difficulties develop faith in their own ability to create change.

Research has found that the ability to persevere may be as essential as talent or IQ to succeed. The good news? Persistence is a trait that can be taught and learned. It’s just a matter of knowing how to help your children — and not giving up on them when they give up on themselves.

Seymour Spider & the Drums

LIFE SKILL #3 TEAMWORK

Learning to collaborate with others plays an important role in the acquisition of social skills such as cooperating, negotiating, and listening. In turn these skills enhance preparedness for schooling, tertiary study, and later, the workplace.

Learning to work as part of a team will help your child hone many social skills, such as patience, empathy, communication, respect for others, compromise and tolerance. It also helps them develop confidence in themselves and to trust in other people.

Annabelle Ant & the Saxophone

LIFE SKILL #4 SETTING GOALS

Goal setting helps children to direct their energy and focus in a flexible way, provides structure, and enhances problem-solving capabilities.

When children are encouraged to play an active role in working toward a goal, they develop a sense of accomplishment, self-efficacy, and confidence. Children learn to be resourceful when setting goals and goal setting is linked to higher achievement.

Jock McWaspy & the Bagpipes

LIFE SKILL #5 SHARING WITH OTHERS

Sharing is a core concept that enhances a child’s ability to interact socially, and provides the basis for more advanced skills, such as compromise, negotiating, and cooperation. The act of sharing helps children gain a sense of connection to others, and is associated with better interactions with siblings and peers.

When children make the choice to share, they see themselves in a more beneficial light which makes them more likely to share in the future.

Fergus Flea & the Trombone

LIFE SKILL #6 BEING BRAVE

Courage is an integral part of self-efficacy that provides a basis for facing adversity, accepting challenges, and pursuing opportunities. Children that are able to draw upon courage are also better equipped to manage difficult social interactions. In turn, courage assists children to engage in a broader range of activities, which assists in identifying individual strengths.

To become brave, children need to learn to tolerate feeling scared and not let fear hold them back as these experiences present important learning opportunities.

Carlo Cockroach & the Piano

LIFE SKILL #7 MAKING EXTRA EFFORT

Effortful behaviour plays an important role in helping children understand the link between their behaviour, and achieving desired outcomes. For example, children that engage in sustained effort are more likely to excel, by comparison, with naturally gifted children that do not apply themselves.

Encouraging effortful behaviours helps children develop a sense of self-mastery over challenging tasks, which in turn improves confidence and mood, and developing a more optimistic outlook when faced with challenges.

Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck suggests that people have two kinds of mindsets: growth or fixed. People with the growth mindset view life as a series of challenges and opportunities for improving. People with a fixed mindset believe that they are “set” as either good or bad.

Monty Moth & the Fiddle

LIFE SKILL #8 BEING ORGANISED

Organisation skills are crucial to various aspects of personal management, and provide the basis for developing adaptive attributes such as planning, time-management, and resource allocation.

Organisational ability enhances academic achievement, and also helps children feel more confident, capable and self-assured. Learning to be organised in the home environment will also help assist children to use organisation skills to learn.

Sea Captain Caterpillar & the Squeeze Box

LIFE SKILL #9 CARING FOR THE WORLD

While enhancing children’s understanding of sustainability, has environmental benefits, it also provides a framework for thinking about abstract concepts, such as responsibility, accountability, and long-range consequences. Acting sustainably and caring for the world enhances emotional wellbeing in children, through increasing their belief that they can make a positive difference through their actions.

Encouraging children to explore values and develop an appreciation for the environment empowers children to construct knowledge and explore values to develop an appreciation of the environment and its relationship to their worlds.

Fizzy Bee & the Trumpet

LIFE SKILL #10 WORKING HARD

By encouraging children to contribute and work hard, they learn a sense of their worth and abilities as well as understanding they can play an important role as agents of change. These attributes assist children to develop self-esteem, a sense of their identity, and connectedness to others.

In turn, making a contribution helps develop values such as responsibility, and promotes investment in group goals. As humans we get a sense of satisfaction and joy in the process of working hard not just achieving the end result or goal. So with that, it is important to instil a good work ethic into your child setting chores and being a good role model.

Chores help develop planning skills, build a lasting sense of responsibility and self-reliance and teach children to be empathetic and responsive to other’s needs.

Taylor Termite & the Clarinet

LIFE SKILL #11 CARING FOR YOUR THINGS

By learning to care for and value things, children are introduced to the concept of appreciation, and being grateful for what they have. In addition, through developing the understanding that things have value, children build a sense of responsibility and accountability.

Looking after possessions also teaches children to have pride in themselves and to respect themselves and others around them.

Sissy Slug & the Tuba

LIFE SKILL #12 BEING STRONG

Fostering self-reliance in children enhances several important areas of emotional wellbeing. Foremost, engaging in independent and self-reliant behaviours helps children to develop a sense of their own identity and positive capabilities. In turn, being strong and self-reliant aids the development of confidence, self-belief, and self-acceptance.

Assisting children to be mentally strong allows them to rise to the challenges, stressors and pressures of life, and be prepared for life ahead. Very Well Family provides a number of useful tips on how to raise mentally strong children.

Lilly Ladybug & the Double Bass

LIFE SKILL #13 MAKING FRIENDS

A child may view their ability to make friends as being beyond their control, which could negatively impact their confidence in social settings. When children are shown that the process of making friends involves an acquirable skillset, they perceive themselves as being better equipped to seek out social connections.

Friendships help children develop emotionally and morally and having friends has a positive impact on children’s attitudes about school and learning.

Charlie the Singing Snail

LIFE SKILL #14 BEING RELIABLE

Learning how to be reliable can help children to develop behaviour such as self-regulation, planning, and making positive choices in life. In turn, engaging in reliable actions enhances children’s self-image, and assists in obtaining beneficial outcomes both socially and academically.

Kids need to be taught that being reliable takes effort and self discipline. Being reliable shows thoughtfulness and consideration of others enhancing our reputation and other’s belief in us. This in turn builds our own sense of self belief and self confidence.

Smart and Snazzy Kids provides some useful tips for raising reliable children.

Centipede Jesse & the Banjo

LIFE SKILL #15 JOINING

Children benefit from developing the belief that their unique qualities will be shared, supported, and appreciated by others, and finding their people or ‘tribe’ is a process.

Encouraging children to ‘join in’ and undertake a range of activities, maximises the opportunity to develop healthy and positive social connections. Children that adopt willingness to ‘join in’ give themselves a better chance of forming healthy relationships both during childhood, and throughout their lifetime.

This article provided by Raising Children discusses the importance of school age friendships and how to support your child and facilitate their endeavours to socialise.

Winnie Worm & the Harmonica

LIFE SKILL #16 KINDNESS TO OTHERS

Through demonstrating kindness, understanding and appreciation, toward others, children obtain many positive benefits that last throughout their lives. For example, they tend to form more adaptive social relationships, are viewed more positively by peers, and embrace a wider range of opportunities.

In turn, learning to value others has a positive effect on mood, confidence, and self-esteem. Children who make an effort to perform acts of kindness are happier and experience greater acceptance from their peers.

King Mantis & his One Man Band

LIFE SKILL #17 MAKING DECISIONS

Encouraging children to make considered and independent decisions is an important strategy in building self-belief. In turn, developing self-belief is foundational for
markers of emotional wellbeing such as confidence, resilience, and a sense of worth. When children are encouraged to make their own positive decisions, they are more resistant to negative influences, such as peer pressure and bullying.

Jim Taylor Ph.D from the University of San Francisco in this article in Psychology Today, says decision making is one of the most important skills your child needs to develop to become healthy mature adults.

Gobi Grasshopper & the Pungi

LIFE SKILL #18 GIVING IT A GO

Hopefulness is a key predictor of good psychological health, and developing resilience and optimism. Encouraging children to try new things, or to ‘give it a go’ can help children develop a view that their future is full of possibilities, rather than fearing the unknown.

In turn, this positive hopefulness can assists children to develop self-agency, and act as a buffer when faced with disappointments and loss through their lifetime.

Hope, faith and optimism and positive emotions about the future, are essential parts of a happy childhood. A Psychology Today article by Dr Shane Lopez outlines why hope matters in five key areas.

Johnnie Ray Beetle & the Electric Guitar

LIFE SKILL #19 BEING YOURSELF

Children that are encouraged to ‘be themselves’ through accepting and appreciating their unique personal qualities, tend to feel more confident, have higher self-esteem, and develop a sense of their own worthiness. These characteristics play an important role in maintaining emotional wellbeing, and assist in forming supportive social connections as well as insulating against peer pressure.

Stephen Joseph, PhD is a professor of psychology, health and social care at the University of Nottingham, UK, believes that authenticity (being yourself) leads to happiness.

Mosquito Maestro & the Muzicbug Orchestra

LIFE SKILL #20 BEING A LEADER

By encouraging even young children to adopt positive role-model behaviours, they gain key skills such as listehning to others, communication, and empathy. Such leadership skills form the cornerstone of successful social interactions, and further help in developing decision-making abilities, assertiveness and withstanding peer pressure.

This article from Pennsylvania State University outlines how all children can be leaders.

The following article from Asia Pacific Entrepreneur outlines 15 tips for instilling Leadership skills in children.

Muzicbug Awards Book

The Muzicbug Series comes with the fun Muzicbug Awards Book.
Tear out the Awards pages, stick them on your fridge and encourage your child to do things to earn each Muzicbug character sticker.

For example, if your child waters the plants, they can get a Captain Caterpillar Caring For The World sticker. If they tidy their room, they can earn a Monty Moth Being Organised sticker. There are three stickers to earn for each character so your child can fill the sheet and feel proud of the skills they have learned!

Perform the tasks | Earn the Muzicbug Life Skill stickers | Reinforce positive behaviour | Help build strong kids!