Our Family Mission Statement

 As my husband and I got serious about this homeschooling thing and started researching different curriculums and teaching styles, etc. we quickly realised the vast amount of resources that were out there and that we actually needed some sort of guideline in doing this. We needed to know what we wanted for our family and our children in regards to their education. Then, as I was watching the 12th Annual Not Back to School Summit by Home Education Council of America (HECOA), I recognized what we needed. A family mission statement.

 Even if you are not planning to homeschool, I think it's important that every family has a mission statement. This will make clear what your family stands for and what your priorities are, which will make it so much easier for you to make decisions that affects your family. This is especially useful when you need to make decisions for things that don't have a right or wrong answer. For example, you hear that your child's friends are all starting to learn musical instruments. You might feel like this is something your child needs to start as well. But if you have a mission statement, you can see clearly if this is worth the investment compared to the priorities you set for your family.

 So hubby and I separately wrote down what we thought should be our family's mission and then got together to discuss what we wrote. As we talked about the reasons for choosing these values, it became clearer what we wanted for our family. Then after much back and forth and a lot of diagrams later, we came up with this:

"Our family mission is to raise our children to love God and imitate Christ, by being humble, gracious, courageous, wise, diligent and having integrity."

 There are other good and important values out there, but the truth is, you can't focus on all of them. Hence, you need to decide on what things you are going to focus on. We might add to or delete things from our family mission statement, but for now, this is what guides us in choosing what kind of education we give our children.

Day 1 of Christmas around the world is of course Australia.