Many homeschoolers don’t think about creating a unique name for their homeschool, but there are many reasons why having a name is not only a good idea, but sometimes even necessary.

• Some homeschool accountability groups/umbrella programs may require your homeschool to be identified by a name.
• An official name is often requested when signing up for reading incentive programs, such as Pizza Hut’s Book It! program, or for education discounts at various stores and online suppliers.
• Having a homeschool name may also help your children have a sense of identity with their school.
• A school name will be required for your children’s high school transcripts that you prepare upon their graduation.

How to Choose a Name. So how do you go about actually choosing a name? Since there is no right or wrong way to do it, I can only make suggestions. When creating a unique homeschool name, consider including words related to the following:

• Your family’s last name. Jefferson Homeschool, Anderson Academy, Simpson Preparatory School
• Your street or city. Cherry Street School for Boys, Austin Academy for Excellence
• Words/themes from a favorite verse, poem, character trait, famous person, author, etc. Live Oak Academy, based on Psalms 1:1-3; Raven Homeschool; George Washington Preparatory School; J. Austen Academy
• Words related to your faith. Faith Evangelical School, First Christian School of Christ
• Terms related to your homeschooling style. Mason Academy, Classical Foundations Homeschool, Northward Eclectic School

Beyond the Name. Once you’ve chosen a name for your school, you might even like to make up a logo, motto, mascot, etc. and purchase some custom apparel for your children can wear such as sweatshirts, T-shirts, and caps. CafePress.com is an easy way to create and purchase customized apparel and non-apparel items. Just create your logo and upload it to the CafePress site. You can then put the logo on dozens of different items. (Just imagine being able to give your parent’s a bumper sticker that says something like “My Grandson is an Honors Student at Rolling Hills Academy”!)

Our Family’s Homeschool Name. For the first three years we homeschooled, my husband and I didn’t give any thought to creating a unique name for our homeschool. So whenever we needed to write the name of our school on a form, I simply wrote “Miller Homeschool.”

But this last month my husband and I decided we’d like to come up with a name that not only holds a lot of meaning for us, but that we can keep throughout our children’s entire school careers. After some discussion, we finally decided on Olórin Academy. Olórin, meaning “wisdom,” was coined by J.R.R. Tokein, one of my husband’s all-time favorite authors. But our homeschool name is not only a tribute to the author Tolkein; it also reflects the fact that our family has an intense love for books. A third aspect of the word Olórin relates to our homeschool’s foundation verse: “My son, give attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding.” Proverbs 5:1. So in the end, our choice of a school name reflects multiple aspects of our family and homeschool.

Since I’m pretty much a nerd when it comes to the computer and designing logos and such, I went ahead and made up a logo and mascot for our school (and since Olórin was the original name of Gandalf, our mascot is—of course—a horse).

I have yet to purchase any t-shirts with our school logo from CafePress.com, but I plan to do so soon as my kids are incredibly excited about being able to wear shirts with their school name and mascot on them. I can already see how much having a unique and meaningful school name means for my kids. My kids have already expressed a great deal of pride in their school, something I hope continues throughout their schooling career.

So do you have a school name already? If so, we’d love to hear it. Leave a comment and share why you chose your particular name.

Join Us for Homeschooling Wednesday!

For the rest of the summer, Homeschooling Wednesday will be your forum. Each week you will be able to share with our readers your homeschool curriculum, schedule, lesson planning, curriculum reviews, or anything that might help other homeschooling moms have a better homeschool year

Here’s what you need to do to participate in Homeschooling Wednesday:

1. Post a homeschool article on your own blog, and link back to this post.
2. Then come back here and add your name, the subject of your post, and the post URL to Mr. Linky (Note: Please make sure you link to your individual post, not your blog’s main/front page!)
3. If you don’t have a blog, but would still like to participate, just leave a comment here with your tip/list. Everyone’s ideas are appreciated.

Thanks for participating. We look forward to hearing from you!

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