How to Find the Big Picture for Your Homeschool

It’s easy to get so caught up in your everyday to-learn lists that you lose sight of the bigger picture of what you want your homeschool life to feel like. 

A lot of us start homeschooling with a big, shiny vision of what our homeschool lives will look like. We have homeschool philosophies and founding principles. We have stacks of books and plans. (Some of us start by the seat of our pants and no clear idea what we’re going to do, and that’s fair, too!) But somewhere along the way, we get pulled into the busy-ness of our everyday life — the never-ending to-do list of home-keeping and kid raising and homeschooling — and that big picture we started with fades into the distance. We haven’t forgotten it, exactly, but it doesn’t feel relevant to what we’re trying to do on a busy Tuesday morning.  

It is, though! That big picture is the whole point of homeschooling. It allows us to see where we can improve when we need to, it helps us make good choices with our time and money, and — maybe most important — it reminds us why we’re homeschooling in the first place. When people feel like they’re struggling in their everyday homeschool, it’s often BECAUSE that big picture has gotten lost. We’ve lost touch with the most important metric for measuring our homeschool success. We’re making choices and plans based on the moment and not the horizon — and if we do that enough, we can feel like we’re going nowhere.

The good news is that your big picture homeschool is still there — you just have to get back in touch with it. Here are some strategies to help you do just that.

Get back to your mission statement. 

Many of us write a homeschool mission statement in that first fever of homeschool excitement and forget about it. But a clear mission statement is what gives your homeschool focus, says Lillian Ahern, a Pennsylvania-based life coach and homeschool mom. “Your mission statement is what helps keep you on track, helps you choose between Option A and Option B, helps you stay in touch with the values that matter to you, and helps you set goals and celebrate success,” say Ahern. “It’s one of those crucial things that we often don’t realize we need.”

If you have a mission statement, dust it off and make sure it still reflects the homeschool you’re trying to create. If you don’t have a mission statement, now’s the time to write one. The most effective mission statements are concise, specific, and answer three questions: what will your homeschool do? how will you do it? what will be the end result? (Ahern says her family’s mission statement is: “The mission of the Ahern family homeschool is to educate our children thoroughly in the Charlotte Mason learning tradition at home, using living books and nature study as the foundation for an education that will instill in our children a love of and confidence in learning and allow them to find jobs or get into college after graduation.”)

Feel your way. 

Often, it’s easy to focus on the things we want to do in our homeschool, but successful people put their feelings first, says Lauren Wills, a U.K. life coach who specializes in coaching moms. Wills suggests thinking about how you want your homeschool to feel— peaceful? energized? organized? rigorous? excited?—and to use that feeling as your starting point for every decision.

“If you dream of a relaxed homeschool, but you’re signing up for activities every day of the week, you’re going to feel unfocused,” says Wills. “Or if you want a peaceful homeschool and you’re fighting with your child about math every single day, it’s quite obvious what you need to change.” 

Take advantage of group-think. 

When homeschool gets out of focus, it can be because you and your kids don’t share a common goal. Maybe your son wants to do more science, while you’re trying to stick with a Classical schedule — or your daughter wants to go to fashion school and is frustrated by a traditional academic schedule. “Focusing means getting on the same page,” says Ahern. The first step? Sitting down with your kids to talk about their goals and expectations.

“The minute you stop saying I and start saying we, magical things can happen in your homeschool,” says Ahern. Once you understand each other’s wants and needs, you can point your homeschool in the right direction. Sometimes that direction is immediately obvious. Other times, it may take some compromise and negotiation to figure it out. Either way, talking about it is the first step.

Lean into the NO. 

One of the most effective ways to hone in on what’s important to you is to figure out what you don’t want. There are trade-offs for every choice: If you’re embracing a fully child-led learning style, that means math might end up on the back burner for big stretches of time. If you’re opting into a structured Charlotte Mason homeschool, you won’t have the kind of wild and free forest school experience other homeschoolers share on Instagram. As you articulate what you want your homeschool to be, take some time to spell out what it won’t be, too. Every homeschool is different, but knowing what’s NOT part of your homeschool vision can help keep you from getting distracted by shiny ideas that aren’t true to your particular priorities.

Let go of clutter. 

If you’re saving stacks of art projects, curriculum you know you’ll never use again but feel guilty getting rid of, or dusty science supplies that never see any action, cleaning out your school space can have a significant positive impact on your sense of focus, says career coach Beverly Jones.

“When you declutter, you aren’t just cleaning up,” says Jones. “You’re deciding what is valuable and what is not. It’s a physical, practical way to engage in making decisions about what matters to you and what you really want to do.

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