Help Your Kids Make Their Own Vision Boards

I absolutely love setting goals for the new year. It’s a time that’s full of self-reflection and optimism for me. Even though I have plenty of experience with totally failing at my new year’s resolutions, I have also been very successful with them. Depends on the year, and the goal, I suppose!

I always want my children to have the same motivation to set new goals at this time of year as I do, but that is not always the case. I really want to teach them that goal setting is an important part of self-improvement, and not some boring thing that Mom wants you to do every new year (or every month during the summer).

In other words, my kids need to see goal setting as something FUN.

I don’t think they inherently hate setting goals at all. In fact, they often talk to me about things they’d like to accomplish or things they want to change about themselves. But sitting down and writing these things down is simply not fun enough.

I have been reading about vision boards a lot lately. I’ve never actually made one for myself, but I realized that a vision board might be just the thing to get my kids on board for goal setting. They love doing art projects, so combining goal setting with an art project seemed like a perfect idea.

And it was. The girls absolutely loved doing their vision boards! (And I loved the insight into my children that the finished projects provided!)

How we did it:

1. Gather supplies

Old magazines

Scissors

Glue

Markers

Card stock*

*You could definitely use poster board instead, but I decided to have my girls make small vision boards to start. If they enjoyed it enough, I figured that we could make bigger ones at another time. As it turned out, the small ones were perfect for now. I think if I had given them anything bigger it would have felt too overwhelming.

Daughter #2 Vision Board 2016

2. Write down some goals

I suppose this part isn’t totally necessary, but I did want us to have some sort of idea of what to look for in the magazines. My youngest didn’t really write her goals down to start and instead gained inspiration for what her goals should be by looking in the magazines. It worked for her! She made a really great 9-year-old vision board.

3. Cut up the magazines

Encourage the kids to find anything that can be a visual reminder of the goals they have set. This can be words or pictures, or even just designs or colors. Anything goes. This is their art project—and their goals!

Daughter #1 Vision Board 2016

4. Arrange the collage

This part is harder than it seems! The Maestro and I made small vision boards along with the girls and I had a hard time fitting everything on mine that I wanted to include! I think I’ll actually do a poster-sized vision board sometime soon because I enjoyed the process so much.

5. Glue it down

I definitely recommend arranging first, gluing later. You might notice that my piano looks kooky (I chopped the legs off of it), because I forgot to put it in the initial arrangement. I really wanted it in my collage, though, because sitting down at the piano and singing more often is a big goal of mine this year.

My Vision Board 2016

6. Dress it up with markers (if you want)

Of my girls, only my youngest really did this. But it’s an option!

7. Look at them often

Make sure to display your vision boards in a place where you will see it daily. The girls’ vision boards are now hanging in their bedrooms where they will see them often. Mine is above my desk in my office, where I spend an awful lot of time.

That’s all there is to it! It only took us a couple hours the other night, and we really enjoyed the process. It was a lot of fun doing this project together as a family. Not only was it a fun way to set goals for the year, it was just nice to be together and laugh together and share our goals with one another.

Daughter #3 Vision Board 2016

I have learned in my life that there is a certain magic in writing a goal down where you can see it often. It somehow makes it more concrete instead of just a fleeting thought. And I think it allows your subconscious to work on it more or something. I don’t know why it works that way, really. It just does. So I hope that magic of writing down a goal—or gluing it down in our case—really does work for us in 2016!