A family vision board is a great way to come together as a family and collaborate through a common vision for a new year. It also teaches children about visualisation, goal setting and the importance of creating their own happy life. How you make a family vision board is an individual as your family but here are some ideas to help you along.
Helpful questions in creating your family vision board
It is a good idea to have these questions prepared earlier- just print this page out.
- What did we enjoy last year?
- What do we want to do more of?
- How do we picture an ideal afternoon, holiday, weekend?
- What is important to us?
- What makes us happy?
- What are the things that make us feel good?
- What do we want more off in our life this year?
- What new things do we want to create?
- Would there be any new places we would like to visit?
- Any new skills we would like to learn?
- Any things we would like to become better at?
Other things to consider as you start your vision board:
Some ideas, while exciting, may need to be moved to a 3-year plan or sometime in the future. For example, if the idea was becoming an astronaut, that might be better placed on an individuals child’s vision board (if they were to create one)
The 3 main ideas that will appear on your family vision board
- Small Ideas that are just about prioritising and focusing (ie- one of your kids really want to go kayaking on the Brisbane River– fairly achievable and by having it on the board, it will be more likely to be achieved. Or maybe it is as simple as dinners around the table together.
- Big Ideas Perhaps e a holiday to the snow, which seems out of reach financially but isn’t impossible.
- The Intangible It might be colours or words like “fun” or “laughter” that will help to set a theme and tone for the year that sits around all the big and small ideas.
Gathering Materials
What you will need:
- A board of your choice. You could recycle an old artwork, pick up some cardboard from the newsagent, use a corkboard from Officeworks or a fancy vision board from Kikki K.
- Coloured paper is great if you have any
- Old magazines
- Pens, sharpies, coloured pens
- Scissors, tape & glue or thumbtacks
How a vision board helps family unity
- A bit like a family rules list, it is about a common ground for the whole family.
- It gives all members of the family a chance to contribute to the year ahead
- It gives you something to look back on as a team
How to make a family vision board awesome
Introduce your child to the concept of setting goals and working towards them. Don’t get too bogged in the science of visualisation but to get some buy-in, you can show the kids some actual science around elite athletes and visualisation. Some athletes worth looking up include snowboarding champion Torah Bright, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordon, the list goes on. There is a good research study here that unpacks it as well (it is one of many studies). It doesn’t mean there still won’t be work involved but now everyone knows what they are aiming for.
Explain how images can be used to represent things we want to add to our board, our vision. Our life. Cut out images, draw symbols, create big letters to have a big visual impact!
It is a good idea to make it specific but it is always important to let the children come up with their own things without trying to modify it to what we as a parent think it should be. This is a fun, happy way to come together and generate positive thinking making plans together for lots of awesome memories to be made.
Remember, this needs to be FUN, Happy and generates a lot of good energy.
Where to put the family vision board
You definitely want to put the vision board in a common area. Somewhere you will all see it often so you can be reminded of what the year ahead looks like. It doesn’t need to be a private space, and it is quite wonderful to imagine that you might inspire friends and families to do their own family vision board after seeing yours.
Written by writer and explorers:
Wendy Lila, Atarley and Lila Cerruto.
Join the conversation