Your Subtitle text
home
____________________________________________________________________
Prairie Creek Community School is a public, elementary charter school located in Castle Rock, Minnesota. Here,180 students and their teachers join together in passionate inquiry, project-based discovery, and hands-on learning.
We believe as John Dewey did that students construct their skilled understanding of the world from genuine experiences. They learn math as they run a bodega or quantify the day's recycling. They create their own courts and legislatures as they study government. They become scientists as they design bird-feeding stations and map the geography of the school's woods and meadows.
According to the principles of progressive education, children at Prairie Creek learn how to learn by doing. They pose
questions, they wonder aloud, they bring their natural curiosities to
the classroom for full consideration. Each school day provides them with
real-world opportunities to explore, to inquire, to answer—all the while supported by teachers who channel these ambitions into structured, creative projects and challenging lessons.
In philosophy and in practice, Prairie Creek's progressive curriculum invites students to roll up their sleeves and jump right in to learning—learning that recognizes their lives, during these few years and beyond, as intriguing
and collaborative adventures.
and collaborative adventures.
___________________________________________________
GO GREEN INITIATIVE
_____________________________________________
HAPPENINGS
Prairie Creek Community School will hold the annual election of our Board of Directors on May 29, 2012. Parents, ballots will be sent home in your student's Backpack Express on that day.
ARTIST RESIDENCY
Flying Foot Forum, a Minneapolis-based dance and theater company that fuses percussive sound and dance with an array of forms in music, theater, and movement, joins Prairie Creek students in mid-May for participatory lessons in literary fairy tales (think: Alice in Wonderland!) and imaginative character-play. This residency, led by FFF's director Joe Chvala, is supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board--and culminates in an all-school performance from 10:30-11:30 am on Friday, May 18. Parents, families, and community member are invited to attend!
FOOD, FARM, FUN!
Join us for Summer Camp at Prairie Creek! All kids in the Northfield area who are entering first-sixth grades are invited to
spend the warm June days in the meadows, woods, and waterways of Prairie Creek's Big Backyard, gardening, cooking, eating, sewing, studying chemistry, learning about world cuisines, playing games, and making field expeditions to area farmers' markets and produce farms. We offer three week-long sessions, each with a different emphasis on locally raised foods. Prairie Creek invites both our own students and new friends to join us for purposeful summer days filled with hands-on activities and playful lessons.
_________________________________
Prairie Creek Community School will hold the annual election of our Board of Directors on May 29, 2012. Parents, ballots will be sent home in your student's Backpack Express on that day.
ARTIST RESIDENCY
Flying Foot Forum, a Minneapolis-based dance and theater company that fuses percussive sound and dance with an array of forms in music, theater, and movement, joins Prairie Creek students in mid-May for participatory lessons in literary fairy tales (think: Alice in Wonderland!) and imaginative character-play. This residency, led by FFF's director Joe Chvala, is supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board--and culminates in an all-school performance from 10:30-11:30 am on Friday, May 18. Parents, families, and community member are invited to attend!
FOOD, FARM, FUN!
Join us for Summer Camp at Prairie Creek! All kids in the Northfield area who are entering first-sixth grades are invited to
spend the warm June days in the meadows, woods, and waterways of Prairie Creek's Big Backyard, gardening, cooking, eating, sewing, studying chemistry, learning about world cuisines, playing games, and making field expeditions to area farmers' markets and produce farms. We offer three week-long sessions, each with a different emphasis on locally raised foods. Prairie Creek invites both our own students and new friends to join us for purposeful summer days filled with hands-on activities and playful lessons._________________________________
Read a February 2012 editorial, "Encouraging the education of our youth," in the Northfield News by Prairie Creek's new-this-year director, Simon Tyler.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________