How to Throw a Homeschool Graduation Ceremony and Party
I can’t believe I’m writing this post. We finally arrived at the day where our family got to celebrate our very first homeschool graduate! And with it being a pretty significant milestone, we decided to mark the occasion with a special commencement ceremony followed by a joint party with one of Big Bro’s besties. Even out of town family members flew up to celebrate with us!
Just as each homeschool is unique, each homeschool graduation celebration will be as well. Today I’m sharing how we did it … Big Bro is a pretty simple guy so he didn’t want anything fancy at all.
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Homeschool Graduation Planning Steps
I started planning for his homeschool graduation a few months ahead of time because we had out-of-town family members coming.
- Create a guest list (my son wanted only very tight family and friends for the ceremony and then we had a much larger guest list for the party part)
- Choose a location, date, and time (our dear friends hosted at their beautiful home)
- Determine your itinerary/program of events (you can see ours below)
- Order your graduation announcements/invitations (I ordered from Minted.com; this is the exact style we used)
- Send out graduation announcements/invitations (which I sent about 6 weeks in advance to out-of-state family and a few weeks in advance to local guests)
- Determine food (we decided on a taco/burrito bar)
- Determine decorations/supplies (thanks to my side gig as an Amazon Influencer, we were able to almost all of our decorations for free!)
Commencement Ceremony
Big Bro wanted this part to be more intimate, only inviting VERY close family and friends (about 30ish people). We did get him a traditional cap and gown (more for my benefit … hey, this is just as much my milestone as well!) and he graciously sported it for his homeschool graduation ceremony. We also presented him with a lei as a symbol of the support, love, and prayers that surround him and will continue to surround him.
Here was our commencement ceremony itinerary (inside a very simple program we made), which was only about 30 minutes:
- Welcome & Opening Prayer
- Photo Montage (I forgot to add that into the program, LOL)
- Commencement Speech
- Words from Dear Male Friends
- Presentation of Diploma (and Lei)
On the opposite side of this page you see, we reprinted our family’s homeschool/lifeschool vision, which we also printed out on the same paper we used for the diploma and framed for the welcome table.
These are the goals God laid on my heart when we started homeschooling; goals that have guided us from the very beginning – serving both as our compass and as our prayer as we walked this path of home education.
We did a have a photo montage featuring highlights of each grade of son’s homeschool journey in between my husband’s welcome and my little speech. I just created it in Canva (I do have a Pro account, and found a template that I just dropped photos into).
My favorite part was the words given to Big Bro by three men who have greatly impacted his life so far (besides Dad). Between the three of them, Big Bro has been given a great start for life in the areas of faith, biblical manhood, leadership, entrepreneurship, and stewarding your body to be a fit and healthy providor/protector.
After they spoke, we presented him with his diploma and lei. And that was pretty much it (he didn’t want to do a speech or anything)!
Here’s a peek at Big Bro’s homeschool graduation diploma. The awesome thing about being homeschoolers is the freedom to get creative with it! I Googled some wording online and tweaked it to make it fit for our family. I used this paper to print the diploma on and this cover to keep it in.
The ceremony took place at 4 pm and immediately after the ceremony concluded, guests took turns taking photos with him. I won’t share them all but here are just a couple special ones:
Graduation Party
As soon as photo-taking concluded (around 5 PM), guests started to arrive for the joint party celebrating both Big Bro and one of his best friends (who graduated the same weekend from a local private school). It was a pretty simple and straightforward party with not a lot of fanfare but a lot of sweet fun and fellowship. We invited family friends who have walked alongside us and prayed for him his whole life, friends from church, and the boys invited a bunch of their Dutch fam (they both work at our local Dutch Bros.).
FOOD
Dinner: We decided to do a taco bar because it was easy to make the meat (options were shredded chicken and shredded beef) and prep all the items to go with it before-hand, especially with it being such a huge weekend with two graduations and family coming into town.
Dessert: We got two Costco cakes repping each of their colors – easy peasy! Speaking of colors, we decided to go with blue and yellow. Blue as a symbol God’s presence in Big Bro’s life/the Holy Spirit leading him as he continues on his journey. Yellow as a reminder for Big Bro to always live for God’s glory, as well as joy that comes from doing that. These aren’t necessarily colors for our homeschool, but just colors I was praying about specifically for Big Bro’s journey (the colors may change for each of our girls when it’s their turn to graduate!).
Drinks: We just had ice-filled coolers where guests could choose from different sodas and bottled waters (right next to the cake table).
SUPPLIES
For the Food: This party set not only included the table cover and banner but also the plates, napkins, and cups that we used to serve up dinner and dessert.
Welcome Table: I totally vegged on taking pictures because I was sooo busy running around! Thankfully other people were able grab a few snaps. But we did have a table where we put photos of both the boys, as well as their own card boxes for people to put cards in. We used this table cover from the set I share above to cover the table.
Guest Tables: We had several banquet rounds covered in black linen, plus regular dining tables for guests to sit and dine at. They were decorated with balloon centerpieces and embellished with other table-top decor. The balloon stands came from Hobby Lobby and the balloons came as part of another graduation-themed set, which also had the honeycomb centerpieces. We also had laser-cut wood table-top decorations throughout.
Cake Table: We simply covered a long rectangular plastic table with a simple, white table cover and slapped up one of the banners than came with the party sets I already shared about above.
We were supposed to put up more of the decorations around the house but we were short on time! Anyway, Big Bro and his friend are pretty simple guys so the simpler the party was, the better, LOL.
ACTIVITIES
We didn’t really have much of an itinerary besides eating and mingling. After most of the guests got their food and were seated, each of the dads said a little something to honor each boy, and then both boys came up to share a little about their next steps (which – as of right now – include working for the next year and then buddy enlisting in the Marine Corps next year).
But we did have a few different games for guests to play outside:
Post-Graduation Party
Don’t forget to have your graduate send thank you cards to their guests! These are the ones Big Bro is sending out to everyone who came to his homeschool graduation.
Again, there are sooo many different ways to throw a homeschool graduation celebration. Some people use church facilities or even rent out ballrooms. Some do them even more simple than we did while others’ are grander with lots of coordinating details and special touches.
The important thing is to invite your graduate into the planning and taking into account what he or she would like.
This is a graduation party Facebook group has lots of great ideas and practical tips.
I hope sharing our own graduation celebration was helpful or inspiring!
BTW: If you’re curious at all how we homeschooled high school as unschoolers/lifeschoolers, check out this post.
ALSO: I’m super excited to share about an awesome resource that just launched TODAY! My blogger mama friend, Danielle of Life of a Lifeschooler, put her heart and soul into her new book. THIS is something that has been sooo needed in the homeschool world for a long time, especially for Christian homeschooling families and especially for Christian homeschooling families who are burnt out and overwhelmed! This book is pretty much sums up the heart behind why we’ve homeschooled our own kiddos the way we did/do, PLUS offers practical wisdom for how to do so yourself. 🙂
