Prairie Scholé Homeschool Co-op

Our high school students have been traveling through the Renaissance and the modern era with the men and women who have shaped Western Civilization through poetry, art, song and hymns. This Holy Week, here is a poet by the great English metaphysical poet, George Herbert:

The Agony
Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathomed the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them: Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A Man so wrung with pains, that all His hair,
His skin, His garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

It's always a good time to expose The Screwtape Letters to our students.

If you're the parent of a homeschooled high-school student and interested in Prairie Scholé and did NOT receive an email from me today about this year's class offerings and would like more information, please DM this page and comment below!

Registration for previous members opens next Friday, June 27, while global registration opens July 1. You’ll receive another email with full class descriptions and a link to enroll at that time—so start planning now!

A few key things to know:

Class sizes are limited and tend to fill up quickly.

Returning families will have a 3-day early registration window before enrollment opens to new families.

"This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover."

Read the Great Books with us at Prairie Scholé.

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. Over the past decade, he’s noticed a change among his students: They’ve become overwhelmed by the reading. One first-year student shared with him that, at her public high school, she had never been asked to read a single book cover to cover. “My jaw dropped,” Dames told Rose Horowitch last year. https://theatln.tc/m3YaGD03

Though no comprehensive data exist on this trend, the majority of the 33 professors that Horowitch spoke with relayed a similar experience: Students are shutting down when confronted with ideas they don’t understand; they struggle to get through challenging texts like they used to; they can’t stay focused on even a sonnet. “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” Horowitch writes, “it’s that they don’t know how.”

One explanation is that middle- and high-school students are encountering fewer and fewer books in the classroom. But the decline in reading abilities may also be explained by a shift in values rather than in skill sets. “Students today are far more concerned about their job prospects than they were in the past,” Horowitch continues—and even if students enjoy what they’re learning in literature courses, one professor told her, they want a degree in something that seems more useful for their career. “The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take.”

Read the full story on how a generation of college students stopped reading: https://theatln.tc/m3YaGD03

Join us as we we stroll the Ancient Paths.

"Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." -Jer 6:16

Art: The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer, c.1669-1671

🗣Teaser for the 2025-2026 academic year: We'll be entering the modern period, beginning with the Renaissance and continuing through the 20th Century. We will do a lot of reading (finally--books in our language!), study American Government, American History 🇺🇸, South Dakota and Native history, and geography, with a little of Shakespeare and Latin thrown in (of course!).😍 We are hiring teachers at the high school level. Class sizes *will be limited.* Message this page for more info, or keep following us for updates!

A beautiful reminder for all parents trying to practice restful learning and living at home

Maybe this is exactly the home you wanted before you knew Pinterest existed . . .

Maybe you were a wonderful mom before fifteen internet sensation parenting experts told you, you were doing it all wrong, in all different ways . . .

Maybe your house felt kept up, before you fell down the rabbit hole of "tap to tidy"s and marathon extreme deep cleans . . .

Maybe the birthday parties you hosted were sweet, until you found the YouTube videos of gender reveals more elaborate than your own wedding . . .

Maybe what you’re consuming is what’s consuming you . . .

Maybe half the battle for contentment could be won, simply by choosing to live joyfully in the reality of our own lives, and not the snapshots of someone else’s . . .

Enough is enough. ❤️🏠

Shared with permission from Stephanie Rudas

Early bird registration ends today! Save $10 by enrolling by the end of Monday, August 5. We have 2 spots left in several high school classes and one or two spots left for kiddos under 2nd grade. The remainder of classes are full, but we're happy to add you to a wait list.

Prairie Scholé Membership Learn about joining Prairie Scholé Homeschool Co-Op through our membership options.

This year we're so pleased to offer you a wide range of classes, all of which are graded (though always optional) and suitable for your learner's high school transcript. These are:

🕍A History of the Middle Ages (full year, 1 credit)
🗣High School Latin (full year, 1 language credit)
🐸Friendly Biology (full year, 1 science credit)
🧠Introduction to Formal Logic (fall semester, .5 credit)
💰Personal Finance, based on Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace for high school (spring semester, .5 credit)
🎭Theatre Arts, a Shakespearean Comedy (semester, .5 credit)
📖Medieval Literature, with a focus on Beowulf (semester to a year, depending on instructors)
🇺🇸American political philosophy (spring semester, .5 credit)

Drop us a line to learn more! Early bird registration is going on now.

Send a message to learn more

Classical education is an education in growing in virtue. Join us as we focus on a new virtue every quarter.

C. S. Lewis, “Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” Mere Christianity.

Send a message to learn more

Shakespeare, Beowulf, folk songs, fairy tales, logic, The Middle Ages, Rabbit Trails, Biology--even a Hobbits' Day party. All this and so much more being prepared for your homeschool family. Registration now open!

Prairie Scholé Membership Learn about joining Prairie Scholé Homeschool Co-Op through our membership options.