The year through your kids eyes: guest blog by Sam James Coaching 2015
As a mum of two children, and having worked on family programs in previous roles. I think it is really important to introduce ideas from a young age about positive thinking and well being. It can be great fun to do , some activities involving your kids about looking back over the year and planning the next one.
Two of my favourite ones, that we’ve been busy doing in our house (and are still a work in progress!) have been:
Celebrating the great bits of the year.
We have done this in a few ways:
- looking through our happy jar entries. We decorated a jar a few years ago, and we write out happy memories/achievements on little cards and then place them in the jar throughout the year
- looking through our photos/videos of the year
- looking through my diary at the column I use to note down memories, the gratitude list, and the monthly achievements.
All of these acted as great prompts for laughter and ‘awww’ moments! We now each have our own ‘great things of 2015’ list and a family one! We are now working on a photo collage to go with it.
What do we all want the next year to look like?
- I showed the family one of my vision boards and talked it through, and then just asked what they wanted lots of in our year together….our list includes things like family hugs, nature, sea, film nights, swimming.
- Once we had a list started we collected images to represent them, so that we can make our family vision board for 2016! I did have to stop my eldest including a picture of a shark eating someone – ‘I don’t think we really want that happening do we?!’ To which lots of giggles followed.
- You can either stick, cut, draw, paint etc or I’ve found an app success vision board for iPad and it’s simple to use.
These can be great fun to do together, as well as doing for yourself. Kids have a great simplicity about their dreams. And it is so refreshing to plan the year with them at the heart of it. The 1st January has been and gone but don’t let it stop you getting started now. Go and create a brilliant year, and start great habits in your kids.
Have a brilliant, healthy, happy year,
Sam x
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