Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart. When you’re in a tough season, it can be difficult to remember why you wanted to homeschool in the first place. Here are 98 homeschooling quotes to encourage and inspire you!
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About Homeschooling
Homeschooling is an educational approach where parents or guardians take responsibility for teaching their children at home rather than enrolling them in a traditional school. This method allows for personalized instruction tailored to the child’s learning, interests, and needs, often following a curriculum or lessons chosen by the parent.
Homeschooling can incorporate various teaching styles and methods. Families choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, but all homeschooling families benefit from some extra encouragement and inspiration from time to time!
Our Experience
I am a former public school teacher. My background is in elementary education, and I taught first grade for a few years and tutored reading and math long before my teaching career.
My husband and I decided that for the time being, we want to homeschool our children. We desire to give them a firm foundation, to spend lots of time as a family, to leave lots of space in their days to create, to cultivate wonder, and to learn at their own pace.
I love reading books about homeschooling and homeschooling quotes like the ones below to encourage me on tough days and inspire me to keep going! I hope you enjoy this collection of quotes for homeschooling families.
Homeschooling Quotes About Wonder
“The child should live in an environment of beauty.” – Maria Montessori
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein
“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.” – Maria Montessori
“He said, ‘Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.’” – Roald Dahl
“When children go from one class to the next, followed by extracurricular activities, sports, and then homework all evening, when do they get to experience the wonder of childhood?” – Ainsley Arment
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Children are always throwing out sparks of knowledge, curiosity, and inquiry and adults must be ready to catch those sparks.” – Annalisa Rabotti
“I believe that education is all about being excited about something.” – Steve Irwin
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?” – Dr. Seuss
Homeschooling Quotes About The Early Years
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Picasso
“Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults and other children of all ages.” – Rachel Gathercole
“Children are not only extremely good at learning; they are much better at it than we are.” – John Holt
“Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write, and count. Childhood is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace which is right for each individual child.” – Magda Gerber
“Children, as it turns out, need a childhood.”- Ainsley Arment
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.” – Agatha Christie
“A magical childhood isn’t about having the best toys, gadgets, and vacations. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about simplicity. A magical childhood is about freedom. Freedom to explore, discover, and play.” – Ainsley Arment
Homeschooling Quotes About Empathy
“Empathy grows as we learn.” – Alice Miller
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” – Sydney J. Harris
“If we’re only willing to hear from or connect with people who are just like us, in whatever way that you define that, our worlds are going to be very limited.” – Amber O’Neal Johnston
“The question is not, — how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education — but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” – Charlotte Mason
“Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.” – Arundhati Ray
“Home education is not about school, this is about life.” – Amber O’Neal Johnston
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle
“This is my hope for my children: that they would be granted the opportunity to figure out who they are before anyone else has a chance to decide their identity for them” – My Cup Runs Over
Homeschooling Quotes About Play
“Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers
“At the heart of every child is the need for play. Play is important for creativity, learning, and interacting with peers. But it’s also the way children communicate. If we want to show our children we love them, we need to play with them. Play is the magical portal to connection.” – Ainsley Arment
“A study of kindergartens in Germany compared fifty play-based classes with fifty early-learning centers and found that the children who played excelled over the others in reading and mathematics and were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They also excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and industry.” – Ainsley Arment
Quotes About Homeschooling Outdoors
“Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them.” – The Audubon Nature Preschool
“Nature journaling doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need artistic skills, fancy pens, or expensive journals to get started. All you need is a curious spirit, a pencil, and a notebook. Call them nature journals, field guides, or whatever you like. But go into the fields, walk into the woods, and sit by the streams. Listen, watch, and sketch what you see. Include the date, time, and location. Include lists, quotes, or pressed flowers in your pages if you’d like. And fill them with the observations of your outings. In time, the habit of nature journaling will nurture a love for nature in both you and your children.” – Ainsley Arment,
“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.” – Charlotte Mason
“We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.” – Charlotte Mason
“Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out, ‘Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?’ and so on.” – Charlotte Mason
Quotes About Reading
“Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” – G.M. Trevelyan
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” – Frederick Douglass
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
“Children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, at other times – a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their storybooks.” – Charlotte Mason
“There is no such thing as a child who hates to read. There are only children who have not found the right book.” – Frank Serafini
“Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.” – Charlotte Mason
“The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.” – Charlotte Mason
Quotes for Homeschool Moms
“Managing our stress and our rest is a sign of living wisely.” – Sally Clarkson
“Homeschool may have earned you the disapproval of others. But you don’t have to show up to every argument you’re invited to. God chose you for this task, so don’t question His ability to choose wisely. Homeschooling can be a greenhouse that allows your child to grow into the very best version of himself.” – Jamie Erickson
“The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home.” – Harold B. Lee
“Never let anyone tell you that you aren’t capable of teaching your child. You taught your child to walk and speak. You can teach your child anything you’re willing to learn.” – Simple Living Mama
“If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play!” – Charlotte Mason
“You are your child’s best teacher because you can lead by example. You can show them how to pursue knowledge by doing so yourself. [And] you can join them on this learning journey as a guide through life and education, and sometimes the other way around.” – Ainsley Arment
“Let’s stop striving to be good moms by other people’s standards and start becoming the mothers our children need.” – Ainsley Arment
“Comparison is the thief of joy, but also of a mother’s confidence.” – Ainsley Arment
“It’s so easy to get pre-occupied with spinning all the wheels and completing all the assignments. But I never want to sacrifice relationships on the altar of homeschooling. The world doesn’t need another smart person. It has more than its share of those. What it desperately craves are people who can show kindness, compassion, honesty, and integrity.” – Jamie Erickson
Quotes About Homeschool Moms
“One of the marks of a godly woman is that she takes responsibility for her soul’s need for joy and delight. A woman is a conductor, who leads the orchestra of her surroundings in the songs and music of her life. God is a God of creativity and dimension, and so He is pleased when we we co-create beauty in our own realm, through the power of His Spirit.It was a profound realization when I understood that I could become an artist with my very life.” – Sally Clarkson
“I take my role as a homeschool mother just as seriously as any paid profession. I spent years learning everything I could before we started, and I continue to learn and grow right alongside my kids. How could I not? This is my most important work.” – Simple Living Mama
“The fundamental help in development, especially with little children of 3 years of age, is not to interfere. Interference stops activity and stops concentration.” – Maria Montessori
“An ordinary teacher cannot be transformed into a Montessori teacher, but must be created anew, having rid herself of pedagogical prejudices.” – Education for a New World Maria Montessori
“The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.” – Maria Montessori
“It’s true there is just not enough hours in a day to teach children, clean the house and cook well. The difference between me and other mothers is that I’d rather hire out the cleaning than the children’s learning.” – Theresa Thomas
Quotes About Christian Education
“I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ’s love.” – Sally Clarkson
“A Christ centered education substantiates the change to discover and nurture the unique God-inspired calling each student has for their life.” – Paul Brown
“Isolating the student from large sections of human knowledge is not the basis of a Christian education. Rather it is giving him or her the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator’s existence and in the Bible’s teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false.” – Francis Schaeffer
“We place homeschooling on the throne of God and forget that change comes only through Him. He changes hearts. And truth be told, He can do that with or without homeschooling.”- Jamie Erickson
“But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.” – Charlotte Mason
“The most important gift you can give your child is to help them begin a walk of faith with the God of the universe. From the moment your children arrive in your home, you are teaching them how to see the world, what to consider important, what to seek, what to love.” – Sally Clarkson
Multi-Sensory Education Quotes
“…my object is to show that the chief function of the child–his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life–is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses…” – Charlotte Mason
“Multisensory learning is crucial for total brain growth.” – Unknown
Homeschooling Quotes About Parenting
“Homeschooling doesn’t mean that you teach everything. It just means you decide what is taught, how it is taught, and by whom it is taught.” – Jamie Erickson
“When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not join their chaos.” – L.R. Knost
“It is easy for parents to pass on unnecessary guilt, shame, and insecurity to their children because we fear the rejection of critical and judgmental people in our lives. So if I can help other parents understand the profound importance of accepting children as they are, perhaps I can save those children from some of the anguish I felt for many years.” – Sally Clarkson
“As children grow, what we teach or don’t teach them in the developmental years makes a difference as well. Tough wrote, “What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.” – Ainsley Arment
“Raising children is hard, full of twists and turns, missteps and mistakes, regrets and trying new things. But even on its most challenging day, homeschooling is really just an extension of parenting.” – Ainsley Arment
“Parenting is hard stuff. It builds us up, then beats us down. Swells our pride, then wounds our ego. Fills us up, then exposes our flaws. It defines our future and breaks our bodies. All within the same twenty-four-hour day. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.” – Ainsley Arment
Homeschooling Quotes About Relationships
“One of the main reasons we homeschool is to foster relationships with our children, so when we prioritize the relationship over the to-do list, we are succeeding.” – Ainsley Arment
“Our children need our time, not our intelligence. They bloom with love, not perfect language skills. They need mercy, not intellectual mastery. And they will learn—indeed, truly learn—when they are given time to explore ideas without constant fact-checking and examination.” – Ainsley Arment
“The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life.” – David O. McKay
“You will not reap the fruit of individuality in your children if you clone their education.” – Margaret Howshall
Homeschooling Quotes About Life
“If the precious, limited hours of my day are used bit by bit in scanning information, I will have less and less time for the attentive, slow, good work of creativity, conversation, and connection that real people and real homes require.” – Sally Clarkson
“Kids who are in school just visit life sometimes, and then they have to stop to do homework or go to sleep early or get to school on time. They are constantly reminded they are “preparing for real life,” while being isolated from it.” – Sandra Dodd
“Homeschooling allows you the freedom to step off the highway of learning and take a more scenic route along a dirt road.” – Tamara L. Chilver
“All people need a place where their roots can grow deep and they always feel like they belong and have a loving refuge. And all people need a place that gives wings to their dreams, nurturing possibilities of who they might become.” – Sally Clarkson
“Children acquire knowledge through experience in the environment.” – Maria Montessori
Empowering Homeschooling Quotes
“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” – Edward Everett
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” – Maria Montessori
“Every child has a different learning style and pace. Each child is unique; not only capable of learning, but also capable of succeeding.” – Robert John Meehan
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” – B.B. King
“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” – Mark Twain
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” – Carl Rogers
“We cannot solve our problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” Albert Einstein
“The child who has never learned to work by himself, to set goals for his own acts, or to be the master of his own force of will is recognizable in the adult who lets others guide his will and feels a constant need for approval of others.” – Maria Montessori
“The child looks for his independence first, not because he does not desire to be dependent on the adult. But because he has in himself some fire, some urge, to do certain things and not other things.” – Maria Montessori
“It is necessary that the child teach himself, and then the success is great.” – Maria Montessori
“Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education.” – Maria Montessori
Family Culture Quotes
“Let children alone… the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions – a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.” – Charlotte Mason
“It’s not about how beautiful it looks, but it’s the idea of showing your children that things that are traditions within a family are important, whether the traditions you’re able to capture from generations before or the traditions that you’re building and creating right now.” – Amber O’Neal Johnston
“When you homeschool your children, you have to make sacrifices: of your time, of your energy, of your money. Speaking of money, you know, when I look back, living on one income all those years meant we didn’t drive expensive cars or go on extended high-end vacations. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that we had time together…nothing can replace that. You can have that time too. Concentrate on the positives, and enjoy your time with your kids. You won’t be sorry.” – Barbara Frank
“Family traditions are a silk that weave us into the fabric of times, uniting our past, present and future years.” – unknown
“Our children need our time, not our intelligence. They bloom with love, not perfect language skills. They need mercy, not intellectual mastery. And they will learn—indeed, truly learn—when they are given time to explore ideas without constant fact-checking and examination.” – Ainsley Arment
“Creating with my children is a source of tremendous inspiration, growth and connection for our entire family.” – Amanda Blake Soule
Favorite Homeschool Books
Want some more homeschool inspiration? Here are five of my favorite books for homeschool parents!
The Call of the Wild + Free by Ainsley Arment
The Wild + Free Family by Ainsley Arment
A Place to Belong by Amber O’Neal Johnston
The Read-Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie
The Creative Family Manifesto by Amanda Blake Soule
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