Create a Connection Journal
Today we’re excited to share a fun project with you! As the holidays approach, we have a fun project to share today that can make a perfect gift for your favorite kiddo, tween, or teenager. We’re talking about how to transform a Golden Coil notebook into a connection journal to gift and share with the young person in your life! Below we’re sharing all of our tips for creating a great gift you can give this season.
Order Your Notebook
You’ll need to begin by ordering a notebook. After choosing your cover you have the option of adding a dedication and quote to the first page. When you get into adding pages to your notebook, think about how they will be used. When building our notebook, we clicked the “Standard” tab and divided our notebook into an equal number of half-lined, dot, grid, lined, and blank pages. The pages will fill the notebook in equal sections.
Gather Supplies
Once your notebook arrives, now’s the time to pull out all the art supplies. Pencils, colored pencils, ink pens, markers, washi tape, stickers, and envelopes. To start, you’ll want to go through and number all of the pages on the bottom corners. This comes in handy if you add a callout at the bottom to another page in the journal. Let your creativity flow in the journal and create a variety of pages. Some pages might include prompts or questions. Other pages might be more open-ended. Use your art supplies to doodle and decorate pages. Add stickers, tape, post-its and anything else you can dream up. And when the journal is finished and ready to gift, include lots of art supplies for your young person to use in the journal too.
Prompts
Create prompts for the young person in your life as well as yourself. Customize the prompts for your kiddo. If your child is younger, you might want to keep questions simple and include lots of drawing and open-ended prompts. The prompts could be questions (about the mundane and the big things in life), drawing suggestions, lists, and action items! If your child is older, don’t be afraid to allow space for deeper, harder conversations. We’ve found teens are more open to sharing when you’re allowing yourself to be vulnerable too. Don’t be afraid to share about yourself and allow them room to be open as well. Below we’ve collected ideas you can use in your own notebook or use as jumping off points for your own ideas. Don’t forget to leave yourself space to answer questions and prompts as well!
Questions
If you could have your dream day, what would you do? Where would you go? What would you eat? Who would you see?
What worries you?
What are some of your earliest memories?
What is your favorite holiday? What do you love about it?
What challenges you the most right now?
What do you wish you could talk to me about?
What do you wish I as your parent would do differently?
What makes you feel cozy and safe?
What skills would you like to learn?
If you could plan a dream trip, where would you travel?
Extras
Write open-ended drawing prompts
Create a “This or That” game
Make space for collages
Make a list of favorite words
Write a starter sentence for a short story
Draw squares for a comic strip
Make a “Yay or Nay” list
Create favorite lists for music, tv, movies, and books
Make a positive affirmation page where you can collect words that inspire
Create a positive influencer page to make a list of who has impacted you positively and the advice they’ve given you
We hope these ideas help launch your own connection journal if you decide to make one! Allow yourself plenty of time to customize the pages of the journal without feeling rushed. And if you get stuck, there’s no need to fill every page with prompts and activities at once! You can always add more once you gift it. If you’ve ever created something like this, we’d love to hear more about it in the comments below! Have fun creating your own, customized connection journal and let us know if you need help along the way!