How to plan, de-stress, set goals and show gratitude, all with one calendar!

Happy New Year teacher friends - I hope you're having a great start to 2017 so far!

I've just been doing some lesson planning for my first day back in January (aghh so soon!), and I decided to focus a little more on character education and create this special calendar for my students to start a fresh new year! Not only am I a huge advocate for colouring to de-stress, but I am also a fan of the big Gs - gratitude and goals! I wanted to find a way to combine all of these in one resource for them, so I came up with this colouring calendar:

The idea is really simple: it's a 12 month calendar for the whole of 2017 with a month spread over 2 pages. One page contains the monthly doodle to colour and unwind at the end / start of every month, and the second page is the planning calendar (with a matching doodle in the corner!).

It comes with this title page above which I plan on giving my students to colour in while they reflect on their break and what they hope to achieve this year. It's amazing how meditative colouring in can be! I usually get them to record all of these musings in this Back from Winter Break Activities resource.

One of my biggest passions as a teacher, revolves around Character and developing well-being and self-reflection and I try to incorporate these into my teaching wherever I can. Therefore I created a unique feature in this calendar which includes these principles. Each monthly spread has a special space for recording a gratitude journal as the weeks go by, as well as a goal setting space.

I like to teach my students that it is so important to reflect and focus on what we are grateful for otherwise we can spiral into a whirlwind of negativity. My personal way of doing this has been via the #peakofmyweek on Instagram where I publically share with you a weekly highlight I'm grateful for. There's something said about having them written and recorded...!

And as for goals, well, we need to know what we are aiming for and it has been proven that if we see our goals written or recorded in front of us, we are more likely to achieve them!

This resource is best printed double sided and it can be easily bound together to be hung on a wall or bulletin board, but really you can print and present this however you like! I have drawn each of the doodles by hand so they are completely unique and every month has a totally different design!

I cannot wait to share this with my students, I really believe it will help their well-being and organisation and I hope it helps your students too!

It's great for us teachers as well and I will definitely be using it myself: I am planning on keeping it one school and making my gratitude and goals focused on teaching! This would also make a really nice "New Year" gift if you are looking for ideas for your colleagues.

Speaking of gifts, I am giving you January for free! You can download it from the VIP area now (it's free to register!)

I hope this has given you some ideas for incorporating Character education such as well-being and self reflection into your classroom this new year: I wish you the best start to 2017, let's make this the best one yet! 

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