New Year Reflections is a great way to look back on the year and make goals for the new one. Every year your family can fill out these sheets as a family night tradition. Fun free printables make it easy!
It occurred to me about a month ago that I should post about this traditions, but then I forgot and just remembered that I had wanted to share it a few days ago. I prepped the PDFs and went to put it up yesterday (on New Year’s Eve), but my website host had some major outages and I couldn’t access the site. So I threw in the towel and took a nap, followed by dinner and a kids’ party at a friend’s house. HAPPY NEW YEAR! However, I decided to still share it today, because this is actually something that my family does every year AFTER New Year’s Eve. This is one of my mom’s many holiday traditions: A New Year Reflections Family Night Tradition.
In our church we are encouraged to have weekly family nights called Family Home Evening. Our family usually sang a song, said a prayer, had a short lesson and then played a game and had a treat. Simple, but fun. We weren’t perfect about doing it every week, but we did do this particular activity every single first Monday of each new year without fail. We have been doing it for as long as I can remember. My mom wrote out the categories for everyone and we did our new year reflections and set our goals. Then we went around the room category by category and shared. It was such a fun way to reminisce on the year and spend time together as a family. Every year she saved them and put them into a folder so that we could look back on them and see how our lives had changed over the year(s). My sisters and I all loved doing it so much that we now do it with our own little families.
We always wrote our new year reflections out on a notepad of paper or typed them on a laptop once we were in college, but I decided that I wanted to make some fun, colorful printables, both to share with you and to use with my own family.
I have even included an image to print out and slip into the front of the New Year Reflection binder so that you can have a place to keep them every year. I intend to store ours by the photo albums so I don’t lose it and it is located with all of our other memories.
Below I will show you previews of the PDFs, but if you want them in a clear enough quality to look pretty when printed be sure to download the full files from the links below.
Here is the cheery cover art for your binder. 🙂
DOWNLOAD THE NEW YEAR REFLECTIONS BINDER COVER ART HERE.
Here is the full version that we used as teens and now as adults.
DOWNLOAD THE NEW YEAR REFLECTIONS ADULT/TEEN VERSION HERE.
Since I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, this year I decided that I should really create a version of this tradition that is a bit more little kid friendly. I used to be an elementary school teacher, so I tried to make it a bit bigger for writing, easier colors to read (no yellow), and in simple finish-the-sentence format. I am looking forward to doing it with my own kids this year!
DOWNLOAD THE NEW YEAR REFLECTIONS KID FRIENDLY VERSION HERE.
Let me know if your family decides to try out this tradition! I would love that! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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Katie says
January 2, 2014 at 3:09 pmThese are wonderful! I love the annual binder idea. Thanks for sharing!
tvalone says
December 31, 2014 at 6:55 pmThis is just what I was looking for. I want to start a binder with my kids to reflect on the year. I plan to have them answer these type questions at the end of every month and then on New Year’s Eve we can look back over the whole year. Anyhow, should the question that says “my favorite friends to play with is” be changed to ” my favorite friend to play with is” or ” my favorite friends to play with are”? Thanks.
Sarah Westover McKenna says
January 1, 2015 at 4:52 pmYep. Typo. Dang! I will have to try to find the original file to change it and make a new pdf. That’s bad! :/
Lou Lou Girls says
December 23, 2015 at 12:34 pmHello beautiful! I’m just stopping by to let you know that your fun family night tradition will be featured at our party that starts on Monday @ 7 and goes until Friday @ 7. Pinned and tweeted. Thanks for sharing this with us and we hope to see you next week! Merry Christmas! Lou Lou Girls
Christia Colquitt says
December 23, 2015 at 2:14 pmI wish you could see how big my smile is right now. This is exactly what I need! So excited to start this New Year tradition. Thank you so much for sharing. I found you on the Worthwhile Wednesdays linkup.
Mother of 3 says
December 28, 2015 at 5:56 pmCute! We try to do something like this each year too.
Mother of 3 says
December 29, 2016 at 10:21 amI’ll be printing these again this year.
Kiddo toys world says
February 21, 2018 at 9:13 pmAbsolutely loved this