This week’s Guidebook excerpt begins to discuss the idea of developing a vision for your homeschool and how to develop one that is unique to your family. 

Building Your Family’s Homeschool Vision

In picking up this guidebook you probably have some sort of a vision for homeschooling. It might be a very small vision— you like the idea of setting up a “school room.” It might be very large — your children will be the next generation of missionaries, scientists, and business leaders to influence the world for Christ.

Our family’s initial vision to homeschool was somewhere in between. We wanted our children to have a Christian education unbound by classroom and peer dynamics.In the 1980s Dr. James Dobson interviewed Dr. Raymond Moore on the Focus on the Family radio show. Dr. Moore talked about the idea of homeschooling. Many families, including ours, became interested as a result of his information. At the time we had no children, but we began to prepare.

Knowing nothing of the benefits of phonics, I snatched up some Dick and Jane readers from a garage sale so that we would have some real school books in case homeschooling was illegal and school books unavailable. Yes, God had given us the vision to homeschool no matter what!

It was a few years before children came and a few more years before the first one got to use a newly sharpened pencil. We thanked God that homeschooling was legal and began to live the vision. God has since enriched and deepened our vision, as He will yours.

Why Have a Vision?

Where there is no vision the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). It’s probably safe to say that without a vision your home school will perish.

1. A vision will keep you focusing on what is really important.
2. Each year you will choose curriculum and activities that will help you accomplish your vision.
3. A vision will be a way to strain out things that don’t fit and might distract from the goal.
4. Having a solid vision will give your family something to hold on to when challenges come and you are tempted to quit.
5. Having a vision will give meaning to your children’s daily work. As the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into the promised land, God told Joshua to have twelve stones brought from the river bed and stacked up as a memorial. The purpose was that future children would see the stones and ask their fathers, “What mean these stones?” It was then an opportunity for the children to be taught about God’s faithfulness and might so that they would “fear Him forever.” A solid vision is like the memorial stones. When our children ask, “Why this algebra?” or “Why not that activity?” we have the opportunity to review the vision and teach about God.

Chapter is continued in the CHEC Homeschool Guidebook, available for preorder now!

Check out the New Guidebook!