How to Create a Vision Board with Kids

I hadn’t actually planned on sharing this project but last weekend was National Vision Board Day.  Who knew?  So in honor of National Vision Board Day, I thought I’d share the vision boards I made with my girls this month.

I do believe that you can manifest good things in your life by assuming the best and using the law of attraction to bring in the things you dream of.  I have told my girls so many times- you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with- so make sure you surround yourself with positive, encouraging, kind people.  Why wouldn’t this be true with everything in life?  Surround yourself with inspiration and motivation to achieve things you dream of.

Also, I really wanted to teach the kids about goal setting.  I have one child that is an amazing hard worker but lacks confidence.  I have another child gifted with many natural talents and intelligence but well… motivation and hard work tend to be an issue for her and I think confidence too.

So there are lots of ways to approach a vision board.  For the most part people tend to cut out pictures and random quotes or words from magazines and glue them onto a collage style board.  I wanted to be a bit more focused with our project.  I asked the girls to really focus on just a few things they would like to accomplish or do differently or improve upon in the New Year. We talked about this a bit for a few days prior to starting so all three of us had a general idea of things we wanted to focus on.  Some things we came up with included sports related goals, organization, creativity, trying harder to cultivate friendships and so on.

With that general idea of what we were going to focus on we picked up a big stack of magazines and started cutting away.  The images and words cut should all relate back to the goals the girls had in mind.  I think focusing the board a bit is really helpful as people tend to just cut out things that they like or inspire them or just pretty pictures not necessarily something they really want to bring into their lives.  For example, I always gravitate toward gardens and lots of beautiful plants but cultivating a garden is not a major priority for me this year and I don’t want a pretty picture to detract from what I really want to focus on.

I struggled with appropriate goals for my younger daughter… she wants a bunny as a pet which is 100% not happening and decided she wants to visit Germany, Italy and France this year (also not happening) so I sort of split the difference with her and we took the bunny off the list but kept travel on the list.  While we may not visit those exact places, we likely will take some vacation time together somewhere.   Plus it gives me ideas for summer as I might plan some visits to cultural faires or restaurants or try and do some themed activities at home like fondue night and such to honor her desire to experience Europe. We also just did things that we want to bring more of into our lives- not necessarily goals-  my daughter that loves art wants to incorporate more art into her daily life- we decided to do monthly You Tube lessons (she really enjoys lessons like this one) and to just keep an art portfolio with all her projects in one place and a reminder for less screen time and more creative time drawing and painting.

Once they picked out their images from magazines and a few we printed out online (search Google for the image you want such as “watercolor paints” or “soccer goal”, click on images, right click to open the image in a new tab and select print)  – we pasted them to our board on the lower half.

Next I sat down with each kid and we really dove into what their goals are and what they want to focus on and wrote a list out.  We identified some realistic steps they might take to actually achieve those goals.   For example one child wants to get 100 juggles this year for soccer.  She absolutely hates juggling and has the worst attitude about it.   We decided an extra 10 minutes of practice 3 days a week was very reasonable and we can create a spotify playlist to make it more upbeat and enjoyable.

I think the action steps are super important.  Last year one of my resolutions was to get our dog trained.  Um… that did not happen at all. Not only that but we adopted a second dog and now our older boy has trained the baby with his bad habits.  So just putting a dog on the vision board isn’t enough or just writing out the resolution to train the dogs isn’t enough to make it happen.  This year I have the same resolution but I created a few action steps to get started: 1. Ask for recommendations for trainers on a community Facebook page.  2. Contact trainer to set appointment 3. Request books from the library on dog training and so on.

I typed it all up and we glued that to the top of the foam board.  Last but not least, my #1 parenting goal right now is helping them with confidence.  So we came up with daily affirmations the girls are supposed to say to themselves.  My older daughter came up with her own and my younger used a partial affirmation from a sweet book and stuffie I got her for Christmas.   

So that is it!  Now this vision board isn’t super pretty to actually hang right on the wall of their bedrooms but I didn’t want it shoved into a dark corner and forgotten about either.  The solution was to tack it to the back side of their bedroom door so they see it whenever the door is closed and before bed every night.

Here is how my little girl’s vision board turned out:

I just love her daily mantra and I secretly say that to myself too before I go to workout.

If you decide to make your own vision board this year, or make one with your children, I’d love to hear how it goes for you!