Great Homeschool Convention South Carolina 2025 Recap
What I am still pondering a month after the GHC SC 2025 convention
It's one of the most wonderful times of the year: school planning season! I absolutely love to think about the new school year ahead and decide what we will be learning and reading and doing in school together. It helps with motivation to get through the last push of the current school year. One of my favorite moments in the school planning season is the annual Great Homeschool Convention in South Carolina.
This was my fourth year going to the Great Homeschool Convention (GHC) in South Carolina, and I look forward to it all year long. It's always a great weekend of inspiring talks, community with other homeschool families, and a time to think and reflect on our homeschool without my children around (I usually just take any breastfeeding babies with me and leave the older kids at home). It is fun and relaxing but also intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. A great combination for a fun time!
It has been about three weeks since I came back from the convention, and I wanted to write some of my takeaway thoughts and favorite ideas with which I left the convention. I will list each of the presentations I attended and a few key ideas from each one. I will not be summarizing the presentations as that would take too long. Instead I will just focus on one or two ideas that I personally am still pondering after the convention.
Ana Willis from They Call Me Blessed - Scheduling the Feast of Subjects: How to Schedule Your Homeschool Week
This talk was aimed more toward newbie homeschoolers or homeschoolers who are new to Charlotte Mason and overwhelmed with trying to fit everything into their schedule. The best practical tip she gave was to break your day into blocks (morning time, desk work, and afternoon blocks as one example) and make loop schedules. Don’t try to do everything every day! Just do a few things the first day, the next few things on the list on day 2, and so on until the end of the list. Then start again at the top! This definitely made the overwhelming list of subjects seem doable for new homeschoolers.
Andrew Pudewa from IEW - Fairy Tales and the Moral Imagination
Andrew Pudewa talked about the ability of fairy tales to form the moral imagination, and emphasized their value for children and adults alike. He explained that there are four types of stories, and the frequency with which we should be reading each type. Whole stories are stories in which good is good and evil is evil and good wins in the end. These should be the majority of stories we read to young kids. Healing stories are ones in which good is good and evil is evil but good doesn’t win in the expected way in the end. These are good to sprinkle in occasionally. Broken stories are ones in which nothing good happens. These stories can be used to teach us to avoid making bad choices during crucial moments of development. The example that he gave was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. An example I thought of was Requiem for a Dream. Everything goes from bad to worse and everything turns out badly in the end, but it certainly dissuaded me from the idea that drug use is a good idea! Lastly we have twisted stories. These are stories in which good is portrayed as evil or evil is portrayed as good. We should avoid these with our children, and ourselves. I’ve definitely been thinking about how to classify different stories into these categories since this presentation.
Carol Reynolds (Professor Carol) - Composer Studies? Finding a Better Way to Teach Music
Professor Carol has such a fun and engaging way of speaking and presenting that I love to go see her at least once a year. One of the main takeaways of her presentation is that especially for young kids, the biographical information usually found in composer studies is not very important. We should instead be emphasizing exposure to tons of music, and making that part of the atmosphere of our home. Once children have had extensive experience listening to different kinds of music, it may interest them to dive deeply into the historical information of the composer and the time in which he was living, but that should be a secondary exploration after lots of musical exposure has taken place.
Ana Willis - A Charlotte Mason Education In An Orwellian and Brave New World
Ana emphasized a few areas of study that we should be teaching our children, especially the Bible, logic, and current events. We want our children to be rooted in the Bible and its truths. She also emphasized how much is lost in the translation of the bible, so we should try to read from multiple translations to get a fuller picture of what each interpretation is saying about a particular passage. We need kids who are solid in logic and critical thinking so that they can identify logical fallacies, defend the faith, and know truth from lies. Lastly, it's important to discuss current events with your kids from the perspective of faith and family culture so that they can be knowledgeable not just about the world but about the lenses with which we should view these events.
Martin Cothran from Memoria Press - The Five Great Classical Works Every Educator Should Know
This was a pretty straightforward talk emphasizing classic works of literature. The most interesting thing to me that Martin said was about how much the King James Bible has influenced the English language. Even as a Catholic he reads and loves the King James Bible and encouraged us to read it as well, even if only for the cultural impact it has had. I was convinced to buy my own copy of the King James Bible with the deuterocanonical books, which I didn't know existed until I spoke to Martin after his talk! Since most of the King James Bibles that are released are for protestant audiences, they usually don't include the apocrypha, but the original King James translation included them! I’m excited to check it out when it makes its way to my home.
Christopher Perrin from Classical Academic Press - The Scholé Way: Recovering Restful Education
Dr. Perrin talked about schole, a restful way of learning. He defined schole as restful learning that often happens among friends in a place set apart. Think of a great book club over snacks and drinks, or a great conversation over a meal with friends and family. The Bible teaches us that for every 6 days of work we should have one day of rest, and we should follow that pattern in our education as well. For every 35 minutes of lesson time, we could set aside 5 minutes just to discuss and contemplate what we are learning in a restful way. Or we could set aside a period of time in our day to ponder a great poem or story over tea. Doing so will help us come away refreshed and invigorated to learn the tougher lessons in our day.
Andrew Kern from the Circe Institute - How to Teach Like Jesus: The Magic of the Parable
I have talked about Andrew Kern before, and my real life friends and family know how much I love and am influenced by him in my educational philosophy. (Interesting to note that he often quotes Charlotte Mason and talks about how much her Philosophy of Education (Volume 6) influenced him!) This talk was focused on teaching in parables after the method of Jesus. He said that we can only tell someone something if they already know it, and if they do not we must show them. I have thought about that concept many times in the last month and think it is spot on. In fact, my husband very much uses this approach when speaking in front of juries in his role as a prosecutor. I could go on about the themes of this talk, but this was definitely an idea worth thinking about.
Rebekah Lovell from the Warrior Poet Society - Save the Boys
I saw Rebekah Lovell and her husband John at the last GHC convention. I have two boys ages 3 and 10 months, and it is so evident to me even now how much boys and girls differ and how their needs are truly unique. The Lovells talk about how to raise boys in a countercultural way and I appreciate their emphasis on letting boys be wild, active, and playful. They need movement and freedom. They also need responsibilities and chores and to be challenged. Our society has such a negative view of boys and I hope I can raise my boys to be virtuous men through freedom and responsibility.
John Lovell (Warrior Poet Society) and Nick Freitas - Dangerous Dads
This talk was more aimed at dads, but it was still good as a woman to see two manly men talking about being not only strong but virtuous. They talked about how men sometimes need to listen to the intuition of their wives, because they can perceive things in a way that is different from how men perceive them. They talked about implementing a system of authority in the home that is based on scripture. They also talked about how discipline needs to be ordered toward something in order to be effective. These were some of the things I am still thinking about from this discussion between two dads.
Andrew Kern - How to Teach Like Socrates: The Magic of Discussion
Back to Andrew Kern! Continuing his discussion from the last talk, he talked about teaching in a socratic way. Parabolic teaching has seven stages which take us from the initial invitation to learn all the way through the final step of crowning the student to acknowledge what they now know. Parables should be the first method we use to teach, but socratic dialogue can be used when we have made a mistake in one of the seven stages of parabolic teaching. We can use a socratic dialogue to realize that we do not know something, and must go back to figure out where we have made an error. Socratic teaching takes us into the abyss of the unknown and gradually helps us climb back out into the known.
Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms - Working With Your Kids So They Will Want To Work With You
Some friends were surprised to hear that Joel Salatin came to the homeschool convention, but the GHC is always about so much more than just book learning. All of life is education for a homeschooler, and for many families that includes homesteading. Joel Salatin had a great and engaging way of speaking and I really enjoyed his personal stories and advice about working alongside your family. He offered 10 main tips for working with your children, but some of the ones I have been thinking about the most are to give kids plenty of freedom, allow them to have authority over certain aspects of their life, encourage children to start their own businesses, offer lots of praise, and to allow children to make mistakes.
Andrew Kern - How to Read Like It Matters: Note-Processing for Insight and Fruitfulness
This was really interesting and unlike any presentation I have seen at the GHC before. Andrew Kern was talking to us about note taking systems and how to categorize and find notes that we have taken in the past. He has started an entire substack with some very long posts about this topic so instead of summarizing I will link to them here. If you journal or aspire to journal his posts are well worth checking out!
That’s a wrap on the Great Homeschool Convention 2025! I had such a great time and came away with so many ideas to ponder as I finish the school year and begin to plan our upcoming year. I am already looking forward to the next GHC South Carolina in March 2026!