Creating a Vision Board

We had moved to a new town in a new state. We left our home, friends, and family for work opportunities. I was hoping it would be temporary - Texas was so foreign compared to our cozy, familiar place in Minnesota. When I met other homeschool mothers at the park, and they asked for my phone number, I thought, “Why? I’m only here for a short while. No need to put down roots and make connections here!” But a year went by, and then another. It seemed like we were actually going to live in Texas ... I looked around at our homeschool rhythms, and I was not satisfied. I had not created the environment I desired because this was not where I had wanted to be.

I firmly believe in the power of handwritten goals. In fact, my husband and I have always written our goals for the year, taped them to our fridge, and worked to accomplish them. Seeing our goals in written form, on a daily basis, keep us focused, excited and motivated. However, my goals, dreams, and desires for the rhythms of homeschool were much too visual to capture in a simple, textual, bullet-pointed goal list. The process my husband and I used of setting up goals needed to be expanded upon. To motivate the change I wanted, I decided to make a collection of the inspiring photos offline. Thus the idea of a vision board was born.

I was incredibly inspired by the images of homeschool families who spent their days gardening, handling chickens and goats, and had spaces in their homes for displaying a plethora of nature collections. These were the pictures I wanted to move from my imagination to reality. So, the first step was to begin gathering photographs. I cut out images from magazines, such as Taproot and Modern Farmer, and printed pictures from the internet. Armed with this stack of motivating photos, I formed a collage of them on a piece of cardboard. After the vision board was completed, it found its place in the heart of our home, the kitchen, for all to see. The concrete examples on display of the homeschool life I desired motivated me to finally take ownership of our vision here in Texas. There, on our board, were images of people gardening, chickens, dogs, goats, kids climbing trees, and nature collections. This vision board represented goals for our home life and my children’s homeschool days, and opened fundamental questions such as where does one get chickens? Where will we cultivate our garden? Where should we designate a nature display? These questions lead us to explore, to find the answers, and to put our visions from the board into action. Having a physical image board that all family members could see numerous times throughout the day - instead of hidden away on a screen - created enthusiasm and an emotional connection to what the future could be.

It’s been two years now, and most of the original goals have been met, a few are still in progress, (the goats will be kidding this spring), and some desires have changed. We keep the vision board in our garage now. It has been great fun to show friends and neighbors how far we’ve come in our journey to our goals. Seeing our vision board come to life in the rhythms of our homeschool days has inspired many folks to create a vision board of their own.

Do you have changes you desire for your daily homeschool rhythm? Perhaps a vision board could help motivate you to achieve those goals as it did for my husband, my children and me.