Description
Kickstart New Year 2025 in your classroom! This fun fold-out cell phone art and writing activity is a cool way to encourage students to reflect on 2024, set new goals, and make resolutions for 2025.
Engage students creatively with this relatable New Year’s, All About Me’ Instagram-style cell phone construction, art, and writing resource. Ideal for use as a first-week back activity or as an art-specific or self-reflection lesson.
Invite students to cut out and make a fold-out booklet-style style phone and complete the image-making on the front cover and the writing prompt elements inside. Choose from a selection of ‘phone cases’ or back covers to complete the activity.
I will update this activity each year, so you can download free updates if you would like to continue to use the activity beyond 2025.
What’s included in this New Year Activity?
1. The front cover of the activity:
Invite students to respond to and illustrate the nine questions or prompts with thumbnail doodles or drawings:
Happy New Year, Fireworks, Balloons, a New Year Brings,
Year of the Snake, 2-0-2-5
2. The fold-out inside pages:
2024, Looking Back, is designed in a text message style and asks four questions:
- What is your best-ever memory of 2024?
- What is the most important thing you learned about yourself last year?
- Did you try a new sport or do something that challenged you?
- What would you like to leave behind in 2024?
2025, Looking Forward, prompts the following:
- My top 5 goals
- My wish for 2025
- My no.1 resolution
- Open-ended questions to complete, I imagine that…. I plan to….
3. The phone case or back cover:
- Choose from a selection of writing and coloring templates, including ‘Turn Off Your Phone’.
- This activity presents a creative setting to discuss appropriate cell phone use, safety, etc, for students who now own a cell phone.
4. Additional printables:
- Get Set For 2025 banner to decorate and display
- Large 2025 letters for students to decorate and display
- Photographed examples to display and use for inspiration
- Doodle pages and bookmarks for early finishers
- Clear visual construction instructions
Measurements:
- Cell phone size 4.8 x 9.8 inches
- Each individual drawing square measures 1.5 x 1.5 inches
- Suitable for Canada/ UK/ NZ/ Australia spellings
What materials will I need?:
- Heavyweight paper/card stock for printing
- Scissors and glue stick
- Pens/pencils / colored marker pens for the artwork and written work
- String and pegs for banners
Considerations and how to use this activity:
- Encourage students to move beyond words and ‘draw their answers’
- Consider the space around the images they draw
- How do the nine images look collectively?
- Is there an emerging theme, style, or color?
- What colors do we associate with words? eg, fireworks: red, orange, yellow
- How do students feel about the first week back to school?
- It’s OK to express dislikes as well as likes, our fears, along with our hopes
- The completed phones look great pegged up collectively as a classroom banner or can decorate a wall, door, or bulletin board.
You might like to view my popular Back To School / All About Me resources here:
Back to School, All About Me Resources
View further New Year activities here:
New Year, Chinese New Year Resources
Follow my store on TPT to receive notification of new products, where I will be offering a 50% discount for the first 48 hours after they are posted.
How can I use this resource with my students?
- End December 2024 in a positive, forward-thinking way
- Use as an engaging first-week-back activity for January 2025
- Encourage students to reflect, plan, and set new goals
- Explore hopes and dreams for the future
- Acknowledge challenges and explore solutions
- Generate lively group discussion
- Create an impressive display for a positive environment
- Build creative confidence
- This makes a handy, print-and-go sub-plan
- Add to a New Year unit
Happy teacher feedback
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Christina R says, “My students absolutely loved this resource. It was a wonderful back from winter break activity for them to do. I look forward to using it for years to come, They personalized their phones and were excited to set new goals for the new year.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sheena K says, “This was the perfect beginning activity to 2022! My students loved the thinking, discussion, and creativity they were able to participate in.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mrs. S says, “My students loved this activity! It was so fun to get goals with them and they kept their “cell phones” taped to their desk the rest of the year!”
I do hope you have fun with this resource!
You may like to view these creative seasonal resources:
New Years 2025 Selfies Art and Writing
Year of the Snake 2025 Art Activity
New Year and Chinese New Year Art Activities
Like my work? Please stay in touch!
Please contact me if you have any questions regarding this resource, I am always keen to help,
Thanks!
Diane
Copyright ©The ImaginationBox/Diane Pagan 2022.
All rights reserved by the author.
Permission to copy for single classroom use only