I may not be the craftiest mom. I may not be the best at academic prep. I’m definitely not the one throwing the football. But there’s one thing I know I can teach my kids: how to create a life they love.

It is the start of a new year, so we are working on our vision boards. My 5-year old created one last year and saw some amazing results. This year, my 3-year old is getting in on the action too.

“Back in the old days” (as my 5-year old likes to say), people would create vision boards by cutting out pictures from magazines and arranging the pictures on a poster board. I went to parties where people did this activity together. In 2017, technology makes the process even easier.

Here’s how we do it in my house:

• Setup: We sit together in front of a big computer screen. On one side of the screen, we open a blank PowerPoint page. On the other side of the screen, we open a blank Safari page.

• Image Search: I ask my 5-year old what kinds of pictures he’d like on his vision board. He says “water slides” or “rock climbing” or “swimming underwater.” I enter that into a Google search and click on images. Then we scroll through the images to pick one or more pictures that “inspire” him (we had a fun conversation last night on what “inspire” means).

• Image Capture: Here’s the fun part – You can just grab the picture from the safari window and drop it into PowerPoint. Shazam! Then in my family, there’s a long step related to sizing and positioning the picture just right. Yes, colleagues, we have a future intern on our hands to help us perfect our presentations.

• Discussion: The last step is my favorite. I like to ask what he likes about a certain picture. The water slides didn’t surprise me, nor did the RV, but the picture of the solar system? Where did that come from? Well, a couple days ago, he told me he wants to be an astronaut and go explore all those planets. Cool.

We’ve been doing this for a few days now, finding a few pictures every night, and I’m sure we’ll do it for a few more days before it is complete. He gets so excited after dinner when I say, “Do you want to go work on your vision board?”

The picture above is where we are so far. Yes, there are still a lot of water slides, but we have lots of topics still to cover. More to come on that.

Do you want to go work on your vision board? I’m working on mine too!