new year’s resolution Crafts for kids and setting goals activity

Over the weekend, I blogged about my New Year’s Resolution.  After hearing about my dad talk about this book… I decided I had to try it.  And so far, I’M LOVING THIS!  It gives me a great focus for my year and it’s easy to remember!  

So, all of this got me thinking that New Year’s resolution crafts for kids using one word would work great in the classroom, too! ….so we did it this year and it’s now a yearly tradition!

charting New Year’s Resolutions for Kids

First, we talked about our New Year’s traditions.  We talked about resolutions and I shared how I chose one word for this year.

Then we brainstormed a list of words they would like to choose as their new year goals for this year.

writing New Year Goals

After that, I modeled how to write about my word: ENCOURAGE. “This year, I will encourage…” and then I did a think aloud to model how I would write ways I could be encouraging: writing nice notes to others, giving compliments….  We also brainstormed ideas for some of the other words they came up with.  Lots of focus on sticking to ONE WORD…because these are six year olds after all! 🙂

I thought they would do okay, but actually I was *floored* at how seriously they took this project. Their ticket to their desk was to tell me their word.  Kid after kid, the word was just perfect for what they needed! I was amazed!  

New Year’s REsolution crafts for Kids: Pennants

While they started writing, I went around and counted out pennants for them to write their word on.  They got to choose whether to do rainbow colors like me or a pattern.  Here are directions for how I made the pennants with adjusted widths!

1. Cut 1×2″ rectangles in whatever color construction paper you want to use. (This is super easy and quick to do using a paper cutter.
2. Cut the flag part out of the bottom, cutting halfway from each corner.

When I cut the flag part out, I just grabbed a stack of 10-12 and cut at the same time.  It sounds tedious, but it really didn’t take very long at all! This would also be a simple project for a parent volunteer to work on for you!

Once they had their pennants I had them arrange them on their paper first and then write their word with crayon.

For the kazoos…they are made from construction paper. We made these together in these 4 simple steps.

1. cut one inch strips of construction paper
2. curl half of the strip with a pencil
3. fold the straight end in half and tape together
4. glue to mouth

Of course, you could grab your own kazoos and have kids use those instead of making their own. But they had fun making these.

I was so happy with how this project turned out!  If you want to see me make the 2 versions offered for this craft, check out this video!

New Year One Word Name Tag Stickers

Since this went so well, I decided I needed a way to help them remember their word even after we sent the projects home.  I made pennant labels with their words to stick on their name tags.  The font I used was KG A Little Swag. (And it’s FREE for personal use!)  I hope this will be the perfect reminder for my kids for the coming year!

The New Year’s resolution crafts for kids were such a fun way to kick off the new semester, and I think this *ONE WORD* thing is really going to stick with them better this year!  Find these New Year’s resolution crafts for kids HERE.