A vision board is quite effective in helping children set goals and achieve goals. This post outlines why and how to do it.
When it comes to goals, the setting of the goals is the easy part. The hard part is the achieving of the goals.
There are many benefits to setting goals. Setting goals provides direction and helps you focus on what is most important to you. Those are just a couple of benefits of goal setting.
We all know that it is very easy to set a goal and have it by the wayside within a month or two. Hello New Years Resolutions. So we need help meeting these goals. This is where a vision board is super helpful.
Read: 4 Reasons You Should Set Goals
Post Contents
What is a Vision Board
A vision board is a board of some kind where you put visual reminders of the things you are working toward and dreaming of. It can be anything that works for you since it is your vision board.
Vision boards are often a collage of pictures but can also be words.
We all recently created vision boards in our family. Each one of us created our own board based on our goals. The kids are all really excited about it! This post walks you through how to create your own vision boards and how to help kids get started.
How To Help Kids Set Goals
You first have to start with goals. Your goals are your vision of your life, and you can’t create a vision board with no vision. So step one in making a vision board is to set goals.
I have a lot of posts on making goals on this blog. Goals are a big thing for me. I believe in setting goals. I do it myself and encourage my children to do it. Here are some tips to help your children set goals.
Let Your Child Decide
You need to really step back and let your child decide what her goals will be. This is not the time for you to whip out your list of grievances and suggest she fix those, “You could make a goal to pick your clothes up off the bathroom floor and to do your chores without being asked.” That isn’t going to be motivating or inspiriting to your child.
Let your child think up her own goals.
If she asks you for guidance or suggestions, you can offer them, but avoid giving her specifics. “Can you think of anything you would like to improve about your time at school? Is there something you would like to do better in how you treat others?” Ask leading questions to get them thinking.
Help Your Child Be Specific
Your child might set a goal to “Be nice to others.” This is a great goal! It needs to be more specific and actionable. This can be the main goal, but help her think of smaller goals to go with this. “When I see a child alone at recess, I will invite her to play with us.” That is a specific plan to be nice. “When I get annoyed with my sister, I will not say unkind words.”
“Be a better soccer player” isn’t specific enough. “I will improve my juggle score by 10” is a specific goal. “I will shoot on the goal 5,000 times at home over the summer” is specific.
Goals need to be measurable, which means they need to be specific.
Read: Making and Achieving Goals
Write Goals Down
Have your child write the goals down in a notebook or somewhere he can keep track of them.
Why A Vision Board
You may be wondering why you should bother with a vision board. Can’t you just write the goals down and go from there?
A vision board taps into the power of visualization. There have been many studies done on the power of visualization. Essentially what has been found is that visualizing actually works. Visualizing is powerful enough that if you visually practice something, you will have measurable improvement in that.
If your child (and you!) has a vision board hanging in his room or somewhere he is every day to give him a visual reminder of what he is working on, he can envision himself accomplishing that goal and will also be reminded of that goal. Instead of it just sitting on some paper in a notebook somewhere, it will be in front of his face every day.
Vision Board Materials
Here are the materials you will need to create a vision board:
- Board of some type. Posterboard, whiteboard, even cardboard can work. Or a piece of paper. We went with a whiteboard because we intend to do this year after year and keep it fluid. I want the kids to be able to easily update and change goals. The whiteboard we got is about the size of a poster board.
- Markers, pens, pencils, etc.
- Glue, magnets, tape, etc.
- Pictures (get them from magazines or print them from the internet)
- Scissors
- Optional: White board tape
- Optional: Pencil case to hold your materials in. I wanted one spot to keep all of our vision board materials in.
How To Create A Vision Board
Here are the steps we used to create our vision boards. You can modify them to work for your material. For example, if you are using a poster board instead of a whiteboard, you would use tape or glue instead of magnets to put your pictures on the board.
- Decide your goals
- Divide the vision board up if desired. We are following the Children and Youth program from our church. They encourage setting goals based on the scripture “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” Luke 2:52. So we are making intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual goals.We have four sections on our board. You can do your board with no sections or have categories for your goals. We used tape to divide up the board.
- Decide on images to represent goals. Find them in magazines or print them from the internet.
- Cut out your images.
- Put a title or titles on your board if desired. We wrote titles with wet erase markers so they would be hard to wipe off.
- Use your materials to draw, write, and fasten goals to your board. You might write words for your goals, draw pictures of goals, glue pictures of goals up…We wrote words with dry erase markers so the goals could be changed easily. Some goals are big and need to be broken down into steps. Others might be small, but either way, they will be done in a few days to a few months. I want the goals easy to update. We also used magnets to put pictures up that represent our goals.
- Hang the vision board somewhere your child will see it daily. We hung ours in our rooms. I put mine in my office.
Conclusion
You will be surprised at how excited your children are to make these goals and create these boards. Vision boards are a great way to get kids excited to set and achieve goals!
Related Posts On This Blog
How To Use a Vision Board to Help Kids Set Goals
Materials
- Board (whiteboard, posterboard, etc)
- Markers/crayons/etc.
- Scissors
- Pictures
- Tape/magnets/glue
Instructions
- Decide your goals
- Divide the vision board up into categories if desired.
- Decide on images to represent goals. Find them in magazines or print them from the internet.
- Cut out your images.
- Put a title or titles on your board if desired. We wrote titles with wet erase markers so they would be hard to wipe off.
- Use your materials to draw, write, and fasten goals to your board. You might write words for your goals, draw pictures of goals, glue pictures of goals up...
- Hang the vision board somewhere your child will see it daily. We hung ours in our rooms. I put mine in my office.