Welcome to Smooth Stones Academy

Greetings. Welcome to our school. In my inaugural post I want to introduce you to Smooth Stones Academy (SSA) and tell you a bit about us. We just completed our second year of homeschooling, finishing Kindergarten with our oldest son, Thatcher. Before we embarked on this journey, I attended a homeschool conference where we were encouraged to consider naming our school and to come up with a mission, vision and philosophy statement. Reminded of the old saying, "You'll never get there if you don't know where you're going," my husband and I set out to name our school and define who we would be.

Here are our Mission, Vision and Philosophy Statements posted prominently on the wall of our schoolroom. (Forgive me if they appear a little askew; we were unable to get a good camera angle.) I have been known to read these over and over to remind myself why we do what we do - especially on hard days, aka "Yellow School Bus Days". Check back because I'll blog about those later!

Mission Statement

Our mission is to train and equip our children teaching them about God, His Word, and His world so they have the greatest opportunity to come to Christ for salvation and grow to full-devotion, developing into wise, mature and well-educated Christians with a passion to glorify God and make attractive the Gospel of Christ to people far from Him.

Vision Statement

Our vision for our children is that they will grow into solid Christian adults who fear God and personally accept the Lordship of Christ Jesus. We want them to know right from wrong and choose right. We pray they will aspire to personal integrity and wisdom and display such virtues as humility, responsibility, constancy, gentleness, perseverance, justice, self-discipline, resourcefulness and generosity in their everyday lives.

We also envision academically sound and self-motivated adults who have a passion for learning and a confidence in their ability to achieve and overcome obstacles. We desire for them to graduate with not only a solid background of foundational knowledge and skills but a strong work ethic, a sense of life purpose and vocational and entrepreneurial skills.

We wish for them to marry well, establish stable Christian homes, be good stewards of all God entrusts to them and always maintain an eternal perspective.

Philosophy Statement

We believe children learn best in an environment where education is matched to the child’s personality, learning style and ability. In addition, children have the greatest opportunity to reach their potential when lovingly taught by those who are inherently vested and vitally committed to their success. Finally, we believe the ultimate purpose of life is to accept or reject Jesus free gift of Life and if accepted to glorify and enjoy Him and live in such a way as to be salt and light to unbelievers. Therefore, we believe education presented from a biblical world view is most meaningful to achieve that end.

I am looking forward to chronicling our journey through this blog.