How to write a homeschool mission statement to help your homeschool?

So you may be new here and asking what the heck is a mission statement, or maybe  you’re a veteran homeschooler and you're here because you've lost the joy in your homeschool and are looking to put it back in along with a little direction. Maybe you're somewhere in between and writing a mission statement just intrigues you, welcome! 

Simply put, your mission statement is your WHY. Why are you homeschooling? What do you hope your kids gain at the end of this long homeschool journey? By the way, why you started homeschooling may be different than why you're still homeschooling. Personally, I like to revisit my mission statement every year or every time we have a big life change. Be sure to check out the attached video to see how our mission statement did a complete U-turn this year when we moved across country. It was wild, but we're completely loving it! 

I come from the business world, and in that world we're taught to write out our mission statement, so that when problems come along we don't miss a beat. Just like in business, our homeschool is going to hit snags in the road. Its important to remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. When a roadblock comes, keep your focus and keep moving forward.  A mission statement will help you do that. 

I wish I would've done this in the beginning, but we started homeschooling on accident. I didn't have any intention on homeschooling past that first year, but luckily God had other plans. When you're thinking about your homeschool mission statement, it's important that your WHY aligns with God's WHY. Write it out, pray about it, and then have fun designing your dream homeschool life. 

This is a much simpler process than people think, and I even put together a step by step guide for you with prompts to create your own homeschool mission statement FOR FREE! This homeschool mission statement kit even comes complete with cute stationary to write your finalized mission statement on, so you can feel confident posting it publicly somewhere in your home. 

Write down all of the reasons you want to homeschool as well as the things that are not important to you. Here's what I wrote down for the reasons I want to homeschool. These are things I want Glori to gain from having a home education that she probably would not have gotten had we chose to put her in a public or private school.

Develop a personal relationship with God

Learn to love learning

Recognize that learning takes place in every day life, not just inside a classroom 

Develop a strong parent/child relationship 

Learn to persevere and do things even when they’re hard or she doesn’t want to do them

Acknowledge that life is enjoyable beyond the childhood years: Adulting doesn’t suck, she can decide how she spends her time and fill her time doing things that she loves.

Have the option to learn entrepreneurship 

Be prepared for life and learn how to be sensitive to God’s leading

Enjoy childhood and be allowed to be little/innocent

Now a few things we absolutely don't consider when homeschooling are education gaps, comparison, and knowing everything about everything. What I mean is no one is going to learn everything about everything in lower education, every child is going to have an education gap somewhere. You can hear more about how we fight comparison and what it means to practice controlled, child led learning in the attached video. 

There's not a right or wrong way to do this. Your mission statement can simply be a list of goals like the one above, you can choose to write it out in 2-3 paragraphs, or you can make it a page long. Here's ours. 

Just a reminder, you can download your FREE Homeschool Mission Statement Guidebook here. 

If you like freebies as much as we do, check out our free resource page by clicking here.