Making New Year’s resolutions is something almost every adult on the planet tries to do. A lot of the time, those goals you set at the beginning of every new year never come to see the light of day. But adults make them every year, so why not make them with children? It’s good for them to set personal goals and try their best to achieve them!

Be Role Models for Children

When children are young, they follow everything their parents do. So when you’re helping kids set resolutions for the new year, it’s important to be their role models. If you want your kids to set a goal for getting ready earlier, you need to do the same – show them it’s good for them. If your child is working on doing homework on time or eating healthy, show them they can achieve it! Eat healthier yourself and do your daily chores or pay the bills on time.

Small Steps to Achieve Big Goals

Children should learn something very important from their parents – how to achieve big things by taking small steps. Create a system with your kids – write down small steps for them to take to accomplish all the goals they’ve set for themselves. No one said people, especially children, should leap and jump to reach their goals – you can teach them that small steps will get them there too!

Narrow Down the Resolutions List

The list of goals your child wants to set for themselves for the upcoming year doesn’t have to be 10 pages long. That would be too confusing and time-consuming. Why not teach them to narrow down the list instead? Tell them to make five goals for the whole year and work on achieving those instead of worrying about pages and pages.

Don’t Nag – Follow Through

Your children might need your help keeping up with their New Year’s resolutions, instead of nagging. If you’re constantly on your kid’s back about their set goals, you might get the opposite effect – your child might lose interest and give up on the entire thing. Instead, try encouraging them and following through with the plan.

Keeping up with resolutions is difficult for anybody, but for children, it can be much harder. If it’s their first time making goals for the time ahead, help them – encourage them! Work with them and follow through – make sure you’re a role model and help them achieve whatever they’ve set their minds to!

You’ve probably seen the happiness in your kid’s eyes when they’re splashing in puddles or doing any other messy activity. The good news is that getting wet or sticky is also a component of healthy development. You should not deprive your kids of a chance to get messy and this is why should try these four messy crafts.

Messy Crafts 101: Paint Splattering

Lay cardboard or drop cloth on the ground and give the child a piece of paper. Let them squish some paint on a cotton round and put it on the paper, with the paint side down. After, give the little one a wooden spoon and let them smash the round. See what will happen and let them experiment with other methods of paint application too!

Making Pasta Noodles from Scratch

Your kids will truly enjoy being covered in a gluey, pasty dough and then see how it comes together to create the pasta dishes they love! All you need are pasta ingredients and a simple dough scraper you can get for cheap and use to remove any residue from your countertops.

Press Paper Pulp

With this messy craft, your kids will not only learn how to make paper but also a bit of botany. You will need water, construction paper, a blender, a large bowl, a packet of wildflower seeds, cookie cutters, old or inexpensive window screens, and flower petals.

Let your kids go crazy tearing paper into little bits and then soak them in water for an hour. Put them into the blender with some extra water and blend until you form a damp, not runny, sludge. Add extra water in the process if needed and make sure this step is handled by an adult! Pour the mixture back into the bowl, put almost all the seeds in it, and stir. Then put the screen on the ground and the cookie cutters on top. Let your kids fill the cutters with the mixtures and decorate with petals and more seeds. Once they are dried, pop them out of the cutters and you can put them in soil and get real flowers to sprout from the paper ones you made!

Squish Shaving Cream

You will need a few water-resistant toys, a bin or a kid’s pool, and cans of shaving cream or foamy kids’ soap. Put all the toys into the bin and put shaving cream on top. Let your kid go looking for them in the cream and get real messy! It’s one of the messy crafts all kids just love to do!