How to Create A Vision Board With Your Kids

Vision boards are a great way to bring your dreams to life in bright, bold colors. This creative activity is a wonderful way to teach children the link between our thoughts and our reality—and to help them create a growth mindset and positive outlook. A vision board also gives the tiniest members of the family a way to honor their unique ideas and aspirations about life, and gives them a voice through photos and other visual cues.

What Is a Vision Board?

At its most basic, a vision board is a collage of images that help us focus on goals, dreams, and ambitions. But the magic of creating one—and keeping it front and center—can help us manifest our greatest ambitions. Teaching kids to visualize their hopes at a young age can set them up for success for the future.

As we head into the holiday season and the end of yet another new year, it is important for us to show gratitude for the things we currently have in our lives alongside manifesting our future goals and resolutions. To spark the inspiration of inviting our dreams into our reality, consider vision boards as a fun family activity to spark the magic of manifestation within your children. 

Why Are Vision Boards Beneficial for Kids?

“Vision boards are a powerful way to get clear about what we want, to build our confidence in seeking it out, and to identify concrete and tangible symbols of our desires that we can use to mark success when we attain it,” says Dr. Dinorah Nieves, a behavioral scientist, counselor, and coach.  

This visual representation of our desires and aspirations has been used by world-renowned celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, who created a vision board with a photo of Barack Obama and the dress she would wear to his inauguration before he was elected to his first term in office. Her good friend, and then soon-to-be First Lady, Michelle Obama was the one who inspired her to do it. 

“I created a vision board,” she told Power 105.1’s Ed Lover Morning Show on November 4, 2008, the day of the presidential election. “I got me a board and put Barack Obama’s picture on it and I put a picture of my dress I want to wear to the inauguration.” 

Sharing stories like these with your children can excite them to put their own vision into action with boards that represent their desires and goals. Vision boards can help them feel more confident in expressing their own ideas about life and where they see themselves going in the future. Vision boards can be created digitally, but there is something powerful about creating one with your hands and a variety of materials that feel aligned with individual objectives.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating A Vision Board

Here’s a step-by-step approach to creating vision boards with your children in a fun-creative way:

Intention Setting

To get started, make each step in the process an opportunity to set an intention. After explaining what a vision board is to your children, ask them what they would like to create and why. What is a dream they would like to see come true in the next year or so?

Visual Meditation

Before setting out to get supplies for the vision board, engage your children in a short, 1- to 3-minute visualization meditation.

Sit together in a circle on the living room floor, outside, or wherever you feel most comfortable. Then ask your kids to close their eyes and dream big about something they want to call into their lives within the next year.

After a minute or so, ask them to gently open their eyes and keep whatever came to mind safe in their heart as you begin gathering the materials they need to bring that vision to life. You can even go around the circle and share what each of you saw. 

Strengthening Your Intuition

As your children choose the materials they’d like to use, tell them to tap into their intuition—that little voice inside that helps to guide them. They can do this by looking at the supplies and gravitating toward the ones that feel right.

Whether it’s colorful paper, string, glitter, or stickers, give them the space to connect their feelings and emotions to the materials of their choice. Ask them, “Which materials are speaking to you? Which ones are saying, ‘Choose me!’”

These could be materials bought in a store or even things found in nature like flowers, leaves, and twigs. 

Use Old Magazines and Newspaper to Spark New Ideas

Grab that stack of old magazines and newspapers, if you have any, and make it fun for the children to flip through the pages and cut out anything that gravitates to them. This could be words, photos, a splash of color on the page, or anything that coincides with the intentions they set. They can begin by simply ripping out the pages and then take time in cutting out the sections that will be added to their board. 

Create Your Vision Board

With intentions set, materials intuitively selected, and the visual prompts needed to bring it altogether, the children can begin creating their vision board, using their imagination and intuition to collage the pieces together.

Use glue sticks to strategically place the materials on the board. Instruct them to have fun with it and fill the board as much as possible with everything they envision for their future over the next 12 months and beyond. 

Display Your Vision Board—And Let the Magic Do Its Work!

It’s a good idea to have your vision board somewhere easily visible. While you don’t want to think about what goals you set all day, every day, it’s a nice reminder when you see your vision board consistently. Maybe your child would like to hang their vision board in their room. Or create a family vision board wall or gallery where all of your dreams and goals can be displayed all together.

Ideally, you want to keep the vision boards up for the entire year. Then have your children take a look at what they created and see how many of their dreams came to fruition. This will spark an inspiration in them to continue dreaming big and being confident that the dreams that align with them will become reality.