Children Socially Engaged

"All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged."

Quinn Cummings

Books are the Most Constant of Friends

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

Charles William Eliot

The Lessons of Life

"The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home."

David McKay

Education Inspires!

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

William Butler Yeats

Ideas & Methods for Teaching

". . .the greatest teaching involves many loving and thoughtful one-to-one responses, inspiring and encouraging adult examples, and much freedom to explore. At first it may seem overly simplistic or old-fashioned, but be patient and merciful in your judgment. Simple ideas and methods are usually the most effective, and old-fashioned items often wear well."

Raymond & Dorothy Moore, Home Style Teaching
page 16

Teacher Inspires!

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” 

William Arthur Ward

Wisdom at Every Step

"More than human wisdom is needed by parents at every step, that they may understand how best to educate their children for a useful, happy life here, and for higher service and greater joy hereafter."

The Review & Herald,
September 13, 1881

Home is a Training School

"Parents, remember that your home is a training school, in which your children are to be prepared for the home above. Deny them anything rather than the education that they should receive in their earliest years. Allow no word of pettishness. Teach your children to be kind and patient."

Ellen White, Child Guidance 
Chapter 17

Home, the First School

"It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. They are in many respects silent and gradual, but if exerted on the right side, they become a far-reaching power for truth and righteousness."

Ellen White, Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students 

page 107

Early Child Training

"Too much importance cannot be placed on the early training of children. The lessons that the child learns during the first seven years of life have more to do with forming his character than all that it learns in future years." 

Ellen White, Child Guidance
page 193

Home as a Base

“What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.” 

John Holt

A Child's Natural Bent

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child's natural bent."

Plato

Benefit of Natural Situations and Opportunities to Explore

“Parents should also question much of the contemporary emphasis on special materials and equipment for learning in a child's environment. A clutter of toys can be more confusing than satisfying to a child. On the other hand, natural situations, with opportunities to explore, seldom overstimulate or trouble a small child. Furthermore, most children will find greater satisfaction and demonstrate greater learning from things they make and do with their parents or other people than from elaborate toys or learning materials. And there is no substitute for solitude - in the sand pile, mud puddle, or play area - for a young child to work out his own fantasies. Yet this privilege is often denied in our anxiety to institutionalize children.” 

Raymond S. Moore, School Can Wait

History's Influence on Homeschooling

“Homeschool history tells of more than two centuries of home-teaching influence on American education, although it has been largely obscured by the drawn curtains of conventional bias.” 

Raymond S. Moore, School Can Wait

Importance of Incidental Teaching

“An alarming number of parents appear to have little confidence in their ability to "teach" their children. We should help parents understand the overriding importance of incidental teaching in the context of warm, consistent companionship. Such caring is usually the greatest teaching, especially if caring means sharing in the activities of the home.” 

Raymond S. Moore, School Can Wait

Recipe for Genius

“[Homeschooling]...recipe for genius: More of family and less of school, more of parents and less of peers, more creative freedom and less formal lessons.” 

Raymond S. Moore, School Can Wait

True Education is Preparation for Life

"True education means more than the pursual of a certain course of study. It means more than a preparation for the life that now is. It has to do with the whole being, and with the whole period of existence possible to man. It is the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers. It prepares the student for the joy of service in this world and for the higher joy of wider service in the world to come."

Education, Chapter 1
Ellen G. White

All Children are Artists

“All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.”
Madeleine L’Engle

Small Children, Free as Lambs

Small children should be left as free as lambs to run out of doors, to be free and happy, and should be allowed the most favorable opportunities to lay the foundation for sound constitutions. . .Parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age. As fast as their minds can comprehend it, the parents should open before them God’s great book of nature. The mother should have less love for the artificial in her house, and in the preparation of her dress for display, and should find time to cultivate, in herself and in her children, a love for the beautiful buds and opening flowers. By calling the attention of her children to their different colors and variety of forms, she can make them acquainted with God, who made all the beautiful things which attract and delight them. She can lead their minds up to their Creator and awaken in their young hearts a love for their heavenly Father, who has manifested so great love for them. Parents can associate God with all His created works. The only schoolroom for children from eight to ten years of age should be in the open air, amid the opening flowers and nature’s beautiful scenery. And their only textbook should be the treasures of nature. These lessons, imprinted upon the minds of young children amid the pleasant, attractive scenes of nature, will not be soon forgotten. 

Ellen White, Counsels on Health
Chapter 177, page 1 - 2

Cultivating a Child's Character

"One of the characteristics that should be especially cherished and cultivated in every child is that self-forgetfulness which imparts to the life such an unconscious grace. Of all excellences of character this is one of the most beautiful, and for every true lifework it is one of the qualifications most essential."

Education, Chapter 26, page 237
Ellen G. White