If you’ve been following along with our series on Charlotte Mason Science lessons, you likely have some lingering questions. We’ll address many common queries that we hear from parents and teachers about Science and Nature Study on the podcast today.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

Sabbath Mood Homeschool (SMH) Science Curriculum

• Lower Elementary (Form 1) Nature Study Scope & Sequence
• Upper Elementary (Form 2) Science Curriculum Guides
• Middle School (Form 3-4) Science Curriculum Guides
• High School (Form 5-6) Science Curriculum Guides

SMH Special Studies Guides

• Nature Explorers (Rotation A) (Rotation B)
• Understanding Biomes (Rotation A) (Rotation B)

ADE Special Studies Rotation

The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Nicole
…Nicole Williams…

Liz
…and Liz Cottrill.

Emily

And this is our final episode in our Science series. We have covered a lot of ground. In these series wrap-ups, we like to address any lingering practical considerations and questions and also anything that we might need to discuss when we have children in multiple forms. We like to talk about those overarching ideas or practical application questions. 

So Nicole, can you tell us…probably the question we most want or our listeners most want to know is how and where and if we can combine kids in different levels. At what point can we combine them? 

Nicole
Yeah. 

So Science is a subject where we can combine students in some places and in others we really should not. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
And the deciding factor is always the type of work and the amount of time the form requires. If you’re following along you saw that there were some very big jumps that happen from form to form sometimes. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
Within any single form students can combine without any trouble and, in the upper Forms they combine well across Forms like the high schoolers in Forms 4, 5, and 6, so your ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders, those can be combined and work together and and you can really have that younger high schooler jump in wherever the older high schooler is. And that’s the same in all of the forms, just having your younger child jump in wherever your older child is within that form level. 

Liz
So, are you saying if a child came in in ninth grade and the 11th grader was doing Chemistry 3, that the ninth grader would also do Chemistry 3? 

Nicole
You know, I really think there is so much benefit to that. I know that that seems kind of crazy…

Liz
Yeah, because we don’t like doing things out of order.

Nicole
We don’t, and we still…Charlotte Mason did this over and over. There was never a time she didn’t. And sure, that younger student maybe won’t get as much out of that part 3 than they would have if they had done it later when they’re older. But they’re gonna get more out of the first part than their older sibling did when they went through it. 

Liz
So the benefits outweigh…. 

Nicole
Right. There’s just so many places in a Charlotte Mason education where one thing doesn’t necessarily have to come before another thing. 

Emily
Right, and I think that’s the nature of the Living Books. And also really Science is not Math. It uses math sometimes, but it’s not like you have to learn this concept before this concept before this concept. 

Nicole
Exactly. Right. For sure. 

So Form 3 can even be combined with high school students sometimes. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
This is especially when the older student is new to Charlotte Mason. So you have a new older student, they’re new to this, they can actually begin the core subjects with the Form 3 guide, and a lot of times I recommend that anyway. So students could be combined that way. 

Emily
So you’re saying use the Form 3-4 guides for a new Form 4 student who’s not had all of those so far. 

Nicole
And not necessarily all of them. They don’t need to do two years’ worth, but if they’re going to begin Biology, say, don’t start in the high school Biology, start with the Form 3 Biology and set that groundwork before moving forward. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
Still only requires three to get a transcript credit so an older student doesn’t need to necessarily continue all the way through, but getting those early ones are good. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
Okay, where we can’t combine is at the bottom. So Form 1 should not be joined with any other form. The work is a totally different kind of work. The timing is different and there is this practical danger too that if a young child moves ahead to Form 2 books you find yourself needing to hunt down other books, other experiments. You know, there’s a lot of work that you’re gonna have to do later on to fill that gap. And your student won’t have gotten that foundation, that I hope if you listen to this whole series, that foundation is vital. So they need to kind of live where they are there. 

Likewise, Form 2 shouldn’t be pulled either down to Form 1 because you’re trying to do everybody together, or up to Form 3. The level and the time allowed, they just don’t line up in either direction. There’s just a real developmental process that’s happening with all these. The students need to stay in their spot. 

Emily
And unfortunately, it’s the spots that everybody wants to combine because they do have these strong readers and it’s hard to get together, but it’s imperative. 

Nicole
It is. And just one thing I would say to help yourself out with this is do be thinking in terms of your child moving towards being independent in their work. However that looks for that child, you know, you might need to do the reading early in Form 2, but maybe later in Form 2 they can do the reading by themselves. So there’s a transition in that Form 2 level typically. Work that, make sure you’re getting to the point where in Form 3 they can do the work independently of you, even if there are some workarounds that you have to do. 

Emily
I was just thinking, like your oldest student is profoundly dyslexic and he never was able to be independent with his reading, but he was quite capable and needed, his mind needed, the ideas that were appropriate for his age and form. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
But you would read a lot of his books because you weren’t able to read them in real time to him, and he would have to listen to a voice memo. 

Nicole
Right. And at the same time, he needed that independence. So I would either read early in the morning and record myself doing his reading for the day…but later and now there’s so much technology available. 

Liz
Just with your phone, you can read anything. 

Nicole
You can read anything. Yeah. And so I used to have to— 

Emily
I just saw someone say it’s a great time to be a dyslexic! 

Nicole
Totally. It is. PDFs can be read, the sections of PDFs, so they could read the beginning of the lesson. That’s kind of their setup. They can then read separately, this is what you need to read today. Take the phone over and read the book. You know, there is so much independence that can be worked in there for your older students. 

So the principal is the same one that runs through this whole subject: combine where the content and the developmental stage naturally overlaps, but really protect that progression. And just remember that each stage is built on the stage before it, and the real value comes from letting the students meet these ideas at the right time and in the right way. 

Emily
Yeah. 

So kind of along with that, or tag teaming that idea, we always have the question of placement. Like my kid is new to Charlotte Mason, or new to maybe your Science curriculum or whatever. At what level do I place them? 

And our answer is always the same. Charlotte Mason believed that except in Math and Grammar, they needed to go in at the level appropriate for their age. So if they are in the Form 2 ages, they start in Form 2 Science even if they don’t have the foundation of those other nature lores. Probably they’re encountering a lot of those ideas anyways and their minds are ready to pick that up or you can work on some of those things even in their Nature Study time. 

So that would mean Form 1 students are six to nine year olds. The grades are years one through three. Form 2, nine to twelve year olds, grades four through six, that’s what you put them in. Form 3 is twelve to fourteen year olds, depending on when they come in. and that is grades seven through eight, and then Forms 4-6 is fourteen to eighteen year-olds. Years nine through twelve. 

However, one thing Nicole did not get into is if your students are new to Charlotte Mason and they’re new to Nature Study, the area you can combine everybody is really at the Form 1 level of Special Studies. So your afternoon field work will be the same. You might even well, the older Forms won’t have the time in the morning to read the books, but you maybe could have them read the same ones that you’re reading with the younger kids. They’re just getting it more…they’ll speed through those because they’re usually much smaller and simpler. But that is a good thing to do. 

So you would even recommend using your Nature Explorers guide all the way through high school if they’ve never done it, because it is the foundation for Nature Study, Biology. They need those broad categories and those big ideas. 

Nicole
Right. 

Liz
But the Science and labs you would need to do at their level.

Emily
And book reading, and even the Nature Lore, like Form 2 still has Nature Lore, but that should be a different caliber than their Form 1 Nature Lore. 

So again, there is not any order to those Form 2 or really even Form 3 Sciences and then a lot of them are, like Chemistry 1-3, separate guides. Physics 1, 2, and 3…. But even with that, the order doesn’t exactly matter. Each term stands on its own, and so you do not need to think, well, they didn’t have what Nicole recommends for fourth grade, and they’re coming in as a fifth grader. Do I need to start there? You could, but it doesn’t matter. So you do need to put them in the right level, but the actual topics don’t matter, right? 

Nicole
Right. One thing I suggest to people is if they are new to this and they’re just coming in right in the middle, pick a topic that your kid is most interested in or that you think will really light their fire. Because once they get a taste for this kind of a Science education, usually they’re just gonna take right off. 

Emily
And again, Science is not like Math or Grammar. There is not one entry point, right? There are many, many entries into this world. And really, something they’re interested in, they probably already know a little something about. And so they have a relationship started with that and then can go deeper. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
Well, what other questions do we have hanging out here? 

Liz
You know, I just would say overall just the typical parent insecurity, they feel inadequate to do a professional enough job of teaching such an important subject. And I would just say, even if you love Science and did a lot of Science, you think, well, in the 25, 35 years since I was in school, there’s so much more. You know. But to remember that the student is the learner. 

And I recently read a book called The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen. And she talked about the serious disconnect with children now in the digital age, that they’re not getting enough hands-on experience with anything in life. And I just think that this Science will work against that problem. They’re doing a lot of personal investigation and Science is all about trial and error, and emphasis there on the error. 

And I think we need to face our faulty thinking that knowledge is a sphere just for the professional. You know, that is totally antagonistic to Charlotte Mason’s principles and beliefs. We just need to get over our fear of that and jump in and start learning where we’re at and let the ideas seep into them and ignite their fire for Science. 

Emily
One other thing that maybe kind of plays into that insecurity that we feel as teachers or our inadequacy to teach Science to our children is how do we know that they’re doing well or how do we assess their progress? What do you think, Nicole? 

Nicole
Okay, well I’ll tell you that if you do use my Science guides, I do include an exam. So you would have that to work with, you don’t need to write the exam questions. But first I wanted to talk just a word about what kind of exam we would give for Science.

At the end of each term, you ask a set of Science or Nature Study questions to the child, one at a time within the normal lesson time. They are not multiple choice questions. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
They are not tests of their memorization either. They are essentially narrations. They’re open invitations to tell what they know, what they’ve noticed. So questions might be something like, what do you know of our sun and its atmosphere? Or describe two songbirds, saying what you’ve noticed yourself. Often a drawing is required in these, and you just think about, so that’s a drawing from memory of something that they’ve looked at well enough to be able to outline it and get it there on paper. Could be wild fruit, a twig, phases of the moon. There’s usually a choice of questions, so a child could choose what they feel strongest at answering.

Emily
Because exams are trying to give them a chance to show what they know. 

Nicole
Exactly, right. So because the questions are open, there’s not really right or wrong answers, it’s just about the child telling what they remember. 

So then the question becomes how do you evaluate them? And we do have some principles to look at. Relevance is one of them. Do the observations connect to what was actually studied that term? 

Liz
Or does their answer answer the question that was asked. 

Nicole
Yeah, that’s one lot of them. Detail, do they recall specific features, behaviors, or comparisons? Do the drawings show real attention? Was their personal engagement shown through these answers? Is there delight and curiosity, a sense of relationship with the subject? Their vocabulary is something Charlotte Mason always pointed to. What kind of words they used. Are they reaching for accurate descriptive language? She always talked about the names, them using names, and the same is true here. 

And then maybe more primarily is growth over time. So look at this exam compared to last exam and see are you seeing some growth in the student? Fuller descriptions, yeah, progress, more careful drawings, things like that. 

The last one really is the heart of it. We aren’t scoring memory, we’re watching for a person’s powers of observations to mature, and it just reminds me, Charlotte Mason said the function of education is not to give technical skill but to develop a person. 

So we really…these exams are an opportunity for us to celebrate what they’ve noticed because noticing is really the foundation of scientific thinking, and I hope that you’re picking up on that kind of stuff, that you don’t have to know all the answers in order to score these tests. So while you said that part of your preparation is to pre-read these books – I think that’s wonderful. I don’t think it’s a hundred percent necessary. 

Emily
No, I mean, I do not do that so I can gauge whether my child is doing a good narration. It’s so I can have an informed conversation with them. 

Nicole
Exactly. And so don’t feel like, I don’t know the answers to this. But instead read your child’s exams as if they’re telling you something new and how much do they have to share with you on this exam. 

Emily
That’s really good. 

Did you have any closing thoughts you want to leave us with, Mom? Or is that it? 

Liz
I think you guys have covered it. 

Emily
Okay.

That brings us to the end of our series of episodes on Science lessons. Next, we’re turning our attention to the very Science-adjacent subject of Geography. So we’ll see you next time.

Today we are taking a close look at Charlotte Mason’s Science lessons for high school students. How do we spread a wide enough feast to encompass all the scientific knowledge that we’ve discovered in the last century? Are the types of lessons Charlotte Mason designed enough for 21st century students living in the digital age? Tune in to today’s podcast for our discussion.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

The Body by Bill Bryson

For the Love of Physics by Walter Lewin

Sabbath Mood Homeschool (SMH) High School Science Curriculum Guides

SMH Understanding Biomes Guides (Rotation A) (Rotation B)

ADE Special Studies Rotation

SMH Special Studies book lists
(This is a treasure trove! Use the left hand side bar to navigate down)

SMH Living Science book lists

SMH details on List Keeping

Emily’s favorite Science Notebook: Stillman & Birn Epsilon softcover 8×10

Nicole’s favorite notebook for keeping a Book of Lists: Blueline business notebook

Nature Notebooks:

• Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover 8×10 (Emily’s favorite!)
• Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardcover 5.5×8.5 (Nicole’s favorite!)

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Liz
…Liz Cottrill…

Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.

Emily
We have reached the highest level of lessons in the Charlotte Mason curriculum. And these are a continuing deepening exploration similar to Forms 3-4. So Nicole, will you please tell us about Form 5-6 Science lessons? 

Nicole
Yeah, so Forms 5 and 6, that is grades ten, eleven, and twelve….And we would say that in many cases we would pull Form 4 into this, so nine, ten, eleven, twelve, so our regular high school years. 

In this area, our scope widens. The students are now studying all four core branches of Science every year: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and the Earth Sciences. And we use the same structure described in Forms 3 and 4, where Biology is running concurrently throughout the year, and then one additional Science is taken per term. 

And we talked about this at length in the Forms 3-4 episode, but you can do what Charlotte Mason did where you have four streams of Science going at the same time, so each day of those four days of your week you would do a different subject, or you can follow kind of what we like to do, which is that one and then one more. That’s done multiple days a week and then each term you change. 

Liz
And you’re still getting four complete courses. 

Nicole
Yeah, you’re doing the same amount in a year, you’re just organizing them differently. And it makes it really nice with regard to experiments so that you’re not doing multiple experiments in a single week sometimes, accidentally, and so it works really well. 

Because of that pattern, over three years, a student completes the equivalent of three terms of work in each field. So we would do one term of Chemistry the first year, one term the second year, one term the third year. And after those three, they will have completed enough lab work to assign a transcript credit in each of the core Science courses. 

But I always want to make a note of caution here that Charlotte Mason did not build her curriculum around checking off transcript boxes. Even once a credit has technically been awarded or earned students should keep reading and studying Science in the same way. 

So a lot of universities now, high school graduation requirements, they only require one or two courses, often maybe two courses, one of them a lab, even to go to university sometimes. It’s just two. But Charlotte Mason really wanted them to continue. This is part of their education that’s due them. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
And part of that Science of Relations and becoming scientifically literate people. So we should continue this as part of their regular scope of work. Just keep spreading that feast for as long as we have them in school.

Students at this level also keep reading current events in Science, and it matters more now than ever. These are young adults who will soon be voting on scientific questions. They’re moving from tentatively weighing the news to forming and articulating their own reasoned positions on it. And that readiness is the point as they step towards adult life. 

They also still read Science biography, maybe like one per year as part of their free reading and and as students wrestle with the bigger ideas, reading the life of say Curie or George Washington Carver or Newton, they really see that real discovery is rarely tidy, and it’s also rarely just a single person. There’s like a pushback and the false starts, and there’s persistence and genuine wonder that goes into this. And so when they read a headline that’s like, this is how it is, they can stop and go, but is that how it is? We’ll see how this plays out over time. 

A couple of scope notes to keep in mind for these years. First is the relationship between Science and Math. Math is often called the language of Science, and that is especially true in Physics. A student who hopes to pursue a Science degree then should really take their Math studies very seriously, particularly their Algebra and the higher math. But a student who isn’t ready for that level of Math should not be shut out of the ideas that they can be gaining through their study of Physics. 

Walter Lewin, who wrote the book I use for high school Physics, For the Love of Physics, who was an MIT professor, he’s taught at the higher level and he makes the point that Physics is a way of seeing the world, not just a pile of formulas. So we should let students engage with those ideas and do the calculations when they can. We shouldn’t hold them back from that.

In Nature Study too, there is a big change in this level for students. They are studying a specific biome now for the whole year, and we’re hoping that they will find a specific, small local example of one of the biomes, a patch of forest, a meadow, a stream that would represent we it’s an ecoregion really. So you might live in the Midwest, but you have an ecoregion, maybe a park in your town that is treed and then someplace as a field or someplace it’s a pond that you can go for the whole year to one of these places. 

And they begin to see how species interact, what problems exist, how changes in the environment affect the balance of that life. And this is really Ecology, and this is going to really well supplement their Biology studies. It’s just again just taking it all up a notch. 

Liz
Yeah. 

Emily
Yeah. So just like in Forms 3 and 4 there are four lessons, each 40 minutes, per week and that’s why if they start at Form 3 you have you have two years, eight guides, to work through that takes there and then they can just start on the high school ones in ninth grade, or if they’re starting later they can do the Form 3/4. And a couple of those you do recommend as prerequisites to the high school course. Which ones are those? Biology… 

Nicole
…in particular Biology is one, Physics is another good one, Chemistry can go either way. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
And another one is Astronomy. I really think that middle school Astronomy is a really important foundation to what they’re gonna do for Earth Sciences in high school. 

Emily
Okay. So they’re continuing these streams. Biology, like you said, instead of alternating with Botany, it’s one day a week all three to four years, right? And it starts out with Anatomy, the human body, for two years and then you have Ecology. And if they get this far they could even look into Origins of Life. So they’re taking that topic which you said has got the most information and really taking it to a very deep high level. I know, I was just thinking that those are probably kind of contradictory – yeah it’s deep and it’s high. 

And then three times a week… so that’s one day a week and then three times a week they would do their term Science, so one of the other topics, and as you explained…Chemistry, Physics, and an Earth Science each term. And that way they’re working on all four all year. 

So for the most part, these lessons are going to be independent at this level. And again, your guides are written to the student. They complete their narrations, they draw diagrams, they write up their lab procedures all in a Science notebook. 

So as a teacher, our job is to have the supplies available. This we’ve talked about all throughout the series, how important experimentation is and direct observation. So those are essential to these courses, and it’s essential for their high school credit. 

Nicole
Yep. 

Emily
I do think though that it helps, even if you’re not doing the lessons with your students, to pre-read the books and follow the guides. The example I was gonna show is the anatomy one. This is an amazing book. There are a lot of adult themes in it, or maybe more middle school boy humor, I guess. And you actually don’t have the children read those sections, and so read alongside the guide so you’ll know and not freak out that my kids are going to get all of these crude descriptions. 

But it’s an amazing living book that is absolutely worth it. We’ve had people question that choice because of the irreverence of the author, and it is just so vivacious that many students who even have a repulsion to thinking of anything medical have been drawn into fascination at the wonders of the human body. 

So your guide is written to them. Again, it lays out everything that the students need to do and to read and gives them the prompts that they need for their Science notebooks.

They’re also going to need, like you said, to have chosen a place where they can study their biome. And you do have two years worth of the high school Understanding Biomes Nature Study guides. So just like your guides did for Science, these do for Nature Study and really help direct the focus and work of the students. 

Because it’s one thing to say, go out and study grasslands for a year, and the kids are like, I’m looking at this meadow, what do I do? You have broken it down into all kinds of projects and really research and observation that they can be doing an experiment, kind of Nature Study experiments, that they can be doing and that and gives you guidance. So these are really, really helpful. 

But as a mom, you’re gonna have to work with the child and pick a place, and if it’s not somewhere they can get to on their bikes or on their own feet, you might have to be involved in traveling and driving them there. So that is part of our preparation as well. 

So those would be our top resources we would recommend for you. Also we will link to the special studies rotation so can see what those biomes are at this level that we recommend. You would want a Science notebook. I again for my students chose the Epsilon series soft cover 8×10 nature notebook to have all of their writing and diagrams and lab write-ups in that. That is the same size as the nature notebook my kids have kept, which is the Stillman and Birn Alpha series. Nicole likes the Stillman and Birn Epsilon which is hardcover. It’s a little smaller. You can see them side by side.

And then they’re continuing their Book of Lists throughout this level. We talked about this in the Form 3-4 episode, but they keep lists of wildflowers and birds and they can really choose another thing, whatever they’re interested in, mushrooms or what else is there? Insects, moss, yes, lichen, whatever it is, to list their common name, their Latin name, the family they’re in, where they saw it, and then keep track by the month when they see those things either in bloom or when they’re around at your location. 

Also on your website you have ample book lists of recommendations for living books for supplementing their study of their biome and also Science biography. So we will link to those in the show notes as well.

So what do we hear at this level? Probably similar to the last one. 

Liz
I would say an overwhelming number of moms always want to know is this going to be enough to get my child into college? And I will just say that it is more than enough. Nicole often gets asked about particular subjects and she just told me she often says yes, they covered that in Forms 3 and 4. These are more than adequate for college entrance requirements. 

A lot of parents are concerned, especially when I talk to dads, about whether studying at home is enough if the parent is not science-oriented themselves. Wouldn’t it be better to have a professional teacher? And I just want to say that most famous scientific innovators have studied on their own extensively. And the children have had a lifetime of pursuit in the interests of Science in Charlotte Mason’s method, and that is something. Even a lot of quote unquote professionals do not have the actual enthusiasm for the subject.

Nicole
It’s also important to remember who’s their teacher. And their teacher is the writer. 

Liz
The teacher is the book. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Liz
And your student is the learner. And so don’t worry about your own abilities. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
And one thing I was going to say that is different about the books that you chose at this level: they are all very living. They’re written by a very enthusiastic expert in the field, but they are also almost exclusively very newer books. So they are much more up-to-date. So we have moved beyond just the foundational ideas and we are getting into more of the current modern research. 

Nicole
Right. 

Liz
And I have also had a number of parents tell me about their students that have been through Charlotte Mason’s Science courses and the ones Nicole has written as well. And they tell me that their children actually shine in college in labs. They know what they’re doing. They’re helping the other kids who’ve been in traditional programs to think independently.

I also hear a lot of complaints that a lot of the experiments just don’t work or they just don’t turn out. 

Emily
Welcome to Science. 

Liz
Scientists have that same experience. They learn from their failures and not just the successes. And the students could write up why it didn’t go well.

Emily
Or their ideas about it. 

Liz
Yeah. Yeah, it is excellent training in following directions in precision, in timing, in measurement, and so on. 

And then I guess Nicole touched on this, but just the concern about how do you work out your transcript if they’re only doing a third of Chemistry for three years running? How do you do that? And basically, you accumulate a whole year over three years. But like she said, at the end of the three years, you’ve actually accomplished a year of four different Sciences. And then they have a whole other year for studying all kinds of other Science topics that they would just like to pursue their senior year. 

Emily
So you could assign a third of a credit each year if your program allows you to do that. You could do two half credits, I guess, if that is easier. You could just decide, well, I’m gonna give Earth Science in ninth grade and Chemistry in tenth grade and Physics in 11th and Biology or whatever, however, you want to divide that up because that’s more traditional. But they are working out all of those at the same pace and they are doing a credit-worth of work, it’s just spread across four fields instead of one. 

Liz
And I think the absorption when they go through it slower is much greater. 

Emily
One thing that you talk about, a benefit that I really believe in, is you’re able to not just take…like I did Biology in ninth grade. And as a ninth grader, you are not mentally equipped to be really tackling a lot of the very relevant and serious medical ethics questions that we have today. I’m even thinking about technological ethics, ethical questions with AI and that sort of thing. 

And so by spreading it out, you’re able to not just compartmentalize that off, and you only have ninth grade yourself or ninth grade students, right? The child is growing and their mind is expanding. And so they’re able to tackle some deeper, heavier topics in that field that they wouldn’t be able to if they were doing a more traditional way. 

Nicole
Yeah, I totally think that’s true. I mean, if you think about even the topics that are being approached, you know, Anatomy and then Ecology and Origins. Some of those you want them to be a little bit older before they really dive into them. 

Emily
Yeah.

Well, we hope you can see and appreciate the richness and depth of Science education in Charlotte Mason’s curriculum. Not only will your students understand the principles of Science, they will have built meaningful relationships in many directions. So we’ll be back next week to tie up any loose ends that remain and answer some common objections about Charlotte Mason Science.

Science lessons ramp up even more in middle school, and we’ll explain exactly what to teach and how lessons work at this stage as students deepen their knowledge of the universe and thus care more deeply about the world around them.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

Winners in Life’s Race by Buckley (Yesterday’s Classics) (Living Book Press)

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Form 3-4 Science Curriculum

ADE Special Studies Rotation

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Special Studies book lists
(This is a treasure trove! Use the left hand side bar to navigate down)

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Living Science book lists

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s details on List Keeping

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Calendar of Firsts

Handbook of Nature Study by Comstock

Emily’s favorite Science Notebook: Stillman & Birn Epsilon softcover 8×10

Nicole’s favorite notebook for keeping Lists: Blueline business notebook

Nature Notebooks:

• Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover 8×10 (Emily’s favorite!)
• Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardcover 5.5×8.5 (Nicole’s favorite!)

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Liz
…Liz Cottrill…

Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.

Emily
Because Charlotte Mason designed her curriculum to meet children where they are at and then pull them up little by little, the further we go into a subject, the more is required of each child.

So Form 3, or what we would say grades are year seven and eight, children between 12 and 14. That’s another step up from Form 2. So Nicole, will you share the details about Science education at this level? And I know it’s gonna be a lot more than the last time. 

Nicole
Yep. 

And so in Forms 3 and 4, which I’m gonna explain in just a minute, but the first thing I wanted to highlight is the sheer variety of Science that they do at this level.

Students take up all the major branches: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and the Earth Sciences, and within them they meet a wide range of topics. So often in high school, the subjects get narrowed down to just very specific things for the sake of a transcript for the most part. But at these form levels, kids are still getting very broad exposure to several scientific fields. And the breadth is just one of the big gifts at this stage, I think. 

So it’s worth pausing on what Forms 3 and 4 mean here and why we’re talking about them. Form 3 spans grades seven and eight, and Form 4 is grade nine, and that is how Charlotte Mason combined these things. She assigned the same work in Science, Natural History, to both of these forms for the most part. There’s a few little places where she branches off. 

Nowadays, most high schools start in ninth grade, and so typically we will separate Form 3 from high school. But I just thought it’s good for you to know that the caliber of work that they are doing at this point is appropriate in Form 3 is appropriate. It’s appropriate for that student who’s come up in the Charlotte Mason education, but it’s also…the Form 3 work is often appropriate towards high school credit. So just know that. 

So as for organizing all this, there’s more than one good way to do this. Charlotte Mason on her programmes, she had students studying several streams of Science at the same time, working on a different subject every day of the week, or in her case, most days of the week. Let me just clarify that. That is still one good option, and you’re welcome to follow it. 

The option I usually point families to though is to concentrate on a more term by term schedule like they did in Form 2, like how we explained there. So I keep Biology going all year, one day a week, and then give your attention to just one other Science topic for the other days of the week. 

Emily
I’m thinking if you don’t do this, if you did the one day per and you do four Sciences across the year, one week of like every three weeks is going to be experiments. And so if experiments cause fear and trepidation in your life or just…maybe that’s easier. Maybe you’re like, this is the week we do it and we get all of our supplies. Yeah. Wow. That would be a challenge. 

Nicole
It is. And you know, as my girls, they were my last two that I homeschooled, got towards the end of high school, I asked them, What do you think? What would you prefer to do? Would you like to do a different stream every day of the week or keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it? Which is Biology all year and then we change topics term by term. And they chose to do something different every day of the week. 

Emily
Okay. 

Nicole
And we did run into that where we had three, four experiments in one week. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
But at that point, they’re more independent and they could take that on. I was more just getting them the experiment supplies. So my point really is that either way is fine. I think that if you’re new to this, it’s probably better to do the term by term approach because switching subjects

has value in it. It’s what Charlotte Mason had us do in many categories. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
But if you’re brand new to it, it can be a lot. So anyways, that’s what I suggest. 

Now there’s one place that I make a real change from what Miss Mason assigned. And that is that in Forms 3 and 4, she kept her students in a Nature Lore reader, again a Buckley book, this time Winners in Life’s Race. And this time we have the vertebrates. So in Form 2, she had the invertebrates, and Form 3 and 4 she had the vertebrates in that book. 

Now I love Buckley and I will just champion for her in the earlier forms all day long. But I think that at this stage the children need to really get started on a more formal Biology. We are very deliberate about our Nature Study. I feel like we’re just as deliberate as we could be, and a lot of what is covered in those books that Buckley was presenting to the kids, we’re covering that, but we need to get started on Biology. That is, I would say, the one topic where there is so much more quantity of information for our kids to learn. 

Liz
Today, you mean. 

Nicole
Today. Compared to– 

Emily
And things that they actually have a relationship with so they can take that on earlier like in high school instead of waiting until college.

Nicole
And living books to work with, because you know we see a lot of evidence of Charlotte Mason choosing books because they’re good living books even in her day that were like fifty years old. We see that it was important to her to have that good living book but we have some good living books we can work with. So I think that is very important.

Let’s see, there’s just more information. The Special Studies, like I said, they do a lot of filling that plant and animal side of Biology right alongside the reading. As in Form 2, a Science biography makes a wonderful free read during these years. And now that the students are taking up Biology and other branches, it’s a good time to let them see that every one of these fields was built by real people who were curious enough to just keep asking questions. It’s a really good thing. 

Nature Study also matures at this time. And now our students are looking at things that are more cross-species, pollination, a seed dispersal, things that are not just a single plant or a single species, but more like big picture. 

Emily
Processes and such. 

Nicole
Yeah, I mean this is really important. And it will lead really nicely to what comes next. And that’s what we’re seeing all the way through here is everything is developmentally building up to more. 

This is also where the Science Notebook begins. So before now, you mentioned in our last episode that in their narrations, they could keep a little notebook where just their Science narrations lived, but they didn’t really have to do that at that point. They could do written narrations just with all their other narrations. But now we want them to have a Science Notebook that all of the subjects live in. They can put experiments in there, diagrams that maybe are in the book that they’re reproducing over. So it really becomes a beautiful book. It’s not divided by sections or like divided by topics. You wouldn’t like divide up this is the Biology section, Chemistry…. Just if you’re doing all those subjects, you turn the page and add the next thing. 

Also the Nature Notebook increases here too because they start keeping more formal lists at this age. And this is truly a challenge. It’s exciting, but it’s not easy. But at this point, they’re keeping like flowers and bird lists, they’re identifying them, they are putting their scientific name and their basic classification and stuff like that. So see, really ramping up now. 

And one more addition to this level, beginning in Form 3 and continuing right through the upper forms, students start reading current events in Science. And so through the living books, they aren’t only learning facts, they’re really learning to think. And this subject is huge for this. And then when they’re reading the scientific thought that’s changed over the years and how those ideas have been proposed and tested and sometimes overturned, they gain perspective to look at today’s headlines with a more critical, thoughtful eye. And that’s exactly the scientific literacy that we’re aiming at, for the young person who can read a piece of Science news and ask sensible questions about it and just really be learning to think about things. 

Emily
Yeah, so it is a lot more, and the time is a lot more too. So for the lesson format, we have four lessons a week and they’re all 40 minutes. So we had a total of 70 minutes in Form 2. So now we have 160 minutes. 

Liz
More than double. 

Emily
More than double the amount of Science. And so, like you said, you do not recommend any more Nature Lore because they’re going to be starting actual Biology, but they’re getting Nature Lore as they read about their Special Studies, too. But that becomes more for leisure time. They have to pursue that outside of lessons. 

As Nicole was describing the streams of Science, the big idea, as she said, was to keep variety in each term and across the year. And to do that, while she mentioned talking about or keeping the focus on one Science topic, there is one of those four days that is one stream all the way through. So for example, one day of Biology all year long. The next year you might do a day of Botany all year long. And then at the same time they’re going to have one Term Science for the other three days. 

The format is still the same though. So while the content is ramping up, we’re not learning new procedures, right? They’re recalling the last lesson, they’re reading and narrating and then writing it in their Science notebook. Probably their narration is going in there and diagrams, as you said. And then keeping those lists. 

So our teacher prep at this age, again, Nicole’s guides make it just so easy. You’ve got it laid out every day of the week. And if you wanted to do one day per or one day for one and three days for the other, the way you have it laid out, it’s very easy to do that. So that means they’re gonna be reading more days and one day for experiments every third lesson. 

Nicole
Generally, yeah.

Emily
Generally, yes. So I think as far as teacher prep goes, having the supplies on hand is essential. I showed this for my Form 2 students, but I have these Science bins and I share them with my Natural History club. They also help share the expense of buying some of the Science materials. but I keep them in a Science bin and we just rotate around so we can share materials and the non-consumables, or maybe you might consume a little bit but you have enough for many many students to use. 

So I find that helpful to put pull those ahead of time either at the beginning of the term, or I try to prep those all in the summer so I have most of the things and then I set myself reminders in my phone of if those other random things that I might need to get that are fresh or going to expire or just don’t live in the bins. 

And again still at this age you would prep an object lesson as a teacher. So you are helping your child look more deeply at something. And because we’re looking at processes, you might have to be a little more creative. But also you can, I’m taking your idea about your video object lessons. You could find a video online and do an object lesson from something that you can’t necessarily count on observing outside so that you’re prepared for when you do come across that or evidence of it. Migration. We can’t really do an object lesson on migration, but we could absolutely watch like the paths of birds or or what it looks like for them when they all are flying overhead or whatever. But we can’t do an object lesson out in our backyard on migration.

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
Necessarily. But then someday we might see a flock going over and we’re prepared for it. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
And then I also, because lessons at this age are independent for the most part and you write your guide to the student now, so they are responsible for reading through the lesson setup and all of that, I do pre-read the books that they’re going to be reading so that I can have an understanding sympathy as Charlotte Mason would call it. So I consider that part of my teacher prep as well. 

So resources to mention. Again, Nicole’s guides go with a living book. So it takes a living Science book and then adds experiments to it. You also bring things up to date that might need it if the book is a little older as a lot of living books are and all of that is in here but as I said is the Form 3-4 guides are now written to the student.

So there’s Chemistry, Astronomy, that’s with another book. Oh, and on your website you have lists of lots of books on the topics for the Special Studies levels and all that. And we will link to those in the show notes. 

Science notebooks. I got one that is the same size as our nature notebook for my son. The paper is a little thicker, which allows him to do, I don’t know, just some more drawing diagrams and things. So it’s the same size. And it’s again Stillman and Birn, so the paper is high quality. The bindings are sewn so they’re gonna lay flat. And this is a soft cover book, but it’s in the Epsilon series if you’re interested in just what I did, but that’s not a prerequisite. You can get whatever you think, but something that works well for writing and for drawing.

The Book of Lists. This is a notebook that we will throw a link to in the show notes, but it is full of graph paper. And so these are your…here’s your bird list. You have one for birds in California and California flowers, and then you have Tennessee flowers and Tennessee birds. And so you’re going to write the name and the Latin name and the family they belong to, where you saw them, and then at the end, that’s why the grids are so handy, is you’re supposed to include what date you first saw it and then check off subsequent months that you saw the bird so you really can track…or flowers, when they’re blooming, where you saw them, so you get used to knowing more about their habits.

Nature notebooks again. Stillman and Birn is what Nicole and I both use. I use the soft cover 8×10 alpha series for all of my kiddos. Nicole prefers the Epsilon series hardcover, about 5×8 inches, and they are just wonderful and will last a lifetime.

The Handbook of Nature Study can still help you at this level for object lessons and for your own nature knowledge and things that your children might need to know. 

The Calendar of Firsts. This can be an ongoing project, but the lists really start to take the place of the Calendar of Firsts at this level. 

Nicole
I agree. That might be a good family thing. 

Emily
Yes. 

Nicole
And then you know, maybe there’s younger students that are keeping that up, but yeah.

Emily
And they just might like to if you’ve been doing this for a lot of years they might want to keep adding to it, but I think it’s a good adjunct to the lists or it helps set up their keeping the lists and should excite their interest in doing that project as well. 

Nicole
Yes. 

Emily
Well what challenges or common questions do you hear at this level? 

Liz
I think at this level the biggest problem most parents face is it just seems like too much work. Doing more than one stream at a time, they feel like their kids will be confused or they won’t be able to keep up, and the difficulty of getting around to all those experiments. 

And I would say, you know, preparation ahead of time is key with the experiments. In your breaks in the summer or between terms, that’s the time to get everything pulled together. And you can at this age have your students, this could be an assignment, you know, you need to collect all these things and make lists of things we need to purchase. 

I would say that in our world Science is necessary, it is super important, it is part of our daily way of life. And it’s a big part of the feast, which reflects that Charlotte Mason had that same value of the subjects. The students are independent at this stage. They can read. Nicole’s guides are written to the student. And like I said, they can organize the materials. And they’ll get much more out of their Science the more they own it. And I would just say to the parent, don’t feel burdened about this. Your child needs to be carrying more of the weight at this point. They are beginning to learn how to collect and report data and do serious experimentation and follow directions, read and narrate more in depth. 

And it is important I think to do the multiple streams because atoms, you know, they’re part of Biology and Physics and Chemistry. You know that these Sciences are not distinct subjects. They overlap. 

Emily
That’s why we have Biochemistry or Chemical Engineering. 

Liz
And I’ve read many recent scientific books that are bemoaning the fact that our specialization has limited our knowledge, that we would actually be able to give more application if we understood more about the other fields. But, you know, none of us can be master of any one area. The amount of information that’s out available in the world right now is…did they say it is doubling every 24 hours? 

Emily
Something like that. 

Liz
Yeah. 

Emily
But so the key takeaway is now is not the time for specialization. Right? That would be grad school, probably. 

Nicole
Yeah. But I’m also thinking in response to that question, that this is why we’re always harping on the schedule. Because yes, it does ramp up. And if we have early on established the habits of following a schedule— 

Liz
…and paying attention for the whole lesson.

Nicole
Right, we’re going to be prepared to handle this kind of information. And you know, our students are going to be and we’re going to be.

Emily
And students are not confused by doing multiple streams. 

Liz
No, in fact if anything like she said, it builds interest. A change is as good as a break.

Emily
Thank you for joining us today. Next time we’ll look at the highest level of lessons for students in Forms 5-6. We’ll see you next time.

Charlotte Mason believes strongly in hands-on experimental science, but she reserved these types of lessons for upper elementary students beginning in year four. In today’s podcast, we’ll talk about why this is important and still good advice for today’s students.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

Life & Her Children by Buckley

Madame How & Lady Why by Kingsley

Story Book of Science by Fabre (Living Book Press) (Yesterday’s Classics)

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Form 2 Science Curriculum

The Sciences by Holden

ADE Special Studies Rotation

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Calendar of Firsts

Handbook of Nature Study by Comstock

Nature Notebooks:

• Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover 8×10
• Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardcover 5.5×8.5

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Liz
…Liz Cottrill…

Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.

Emily
So by Form 2, your student should be well acquainted with the natural world. If you have been following Charlotte Mason’s progression of Science and Nature Study lessons, their interest has been kindled. They have made friends with all sorts of things that they have observed around them. 

So now it is time to awaken their interest to other natural phenomena that they’ve encountered, but they likely don’t know why things are the way they are. Like why steam rises, why it’s there in the first place, properties about sound or simple machines and things like that. In other words, they begin learning formal Science. 

So, Nicole, can you tell us what is covered at this age, the scope of their education? 

Nicole
Yes. 

The first lesson of the week continues to be Nature Lore, which we started in Form 1. This keeps that thread from Form 1 going and it leans towards something like a Biology, which it will later become. 

For this spot Charlotte Mason alternated between Life and Her Children by Arabella Buckley and also the Madame How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley. And in Life and Her Children, it’s the invertebrates that are covered in that book. So it’s starting with amoeba and then it’s going to the six-legged insects. It’s kind of working through that category of animals. And then Madame How and Lady Why is more of a Geology – volcanoes, things like that. 

It’s important to note that no child ever would have been in this form long enough to read both of these books. She alternated through, but no student would have gotten both of them. And I think it also is kind of worth noting that people love or hate these books. It kind of goes both ways. 

Today I really prefer to use The Story Book of Science by Fabre. 

Emily
We’ve got a copy of that right here.

Nicole
One of the things I like about it, well, beyond the fact that it’s Fabre and he writes so beautifully, is that he does bring both of those things into there. There are stories about animals, but there’s also a lot of Geology in there and you know, volcanoes and other natural phenomena, thunder, lightning, things that are really in the wheelhouse of kids at this age group. 

So the other type of book that was used was more for those formal Sciences. They’re finally going to get to do this now. And as you said, they are topics that are appropriate for this age. They represent what Charlotte Mason called the Philosophy of Common Things. Things like you said, sound, basic weather, magnets, simple machines, things that are going to be very observable by them. These are not abstract topics. They are things they’re going to already be questioning, or if we’re even just bringing them up a little bit, they quickly grasp right onto those. 

So Charlotte Mason used a book called The Sciences for this by Holden, and she talks about Holden in several of her books. I mean he’s–

Emily
“Grudgingly one of the good things to come out of America.” 

Nicole
Yes, that’s what she said. She did say that. 

So it was a single book, but it covered all these different topics, and she roughly assigned a topic of weather, say or Astronomy, Chemistry, for a single term. So she just assigned part of the book for that.

I don’t use Holden today, not because even though it is over a hundred years old, it’s out of date. You know, really a lot of the information, I’ve really studied it and it’s not bad. It’s just that the experiments are hard for us to reproduce. Yeah. And that was important to Charlotte Mason. We’ll talk about that more in minute. 

But instead I use several smaller, more up-to-date books that cover the same disciplines, and I still rotate them one discipline per term. 

Emily
Like one topic like Chemistry or Weather… 

Liz
And is this because you can’t go to the local drugstore, pharmacy, or as they would say over there, chemist, and get these items anymore that are recommended for his experiments? 

Nicole
Yeah some of the times that is the case, or sometimes it’s just because of the way the experiment is described, it’s hard for a parent to follow and know what they’re supposed to be doing. There’s also the thing that I have a hard time with is that it’s a conversational book and I’m always kind of put off by those somehow.

So at this level students also begin experiments. That’s kind of what we’re talking about here, that Charlotte Mason said that they must be done. And we talked about in a previous episode that the student shouldn’t be doing experiments that are random. They’re not just picked up here and there. And we have a quote that Emily found for me that really explains this. It says, 

One thing is to be borne in mind: nothing should be done without its due experiment. (1.271)

Emily
And she says that right after she’s done a whole long quoting of the Holden book, and then another person that she thought went along with that. And so the way his book is laid out is you would read about a topic and then you would do an experiment to prove what you were reading or to observe what you had just read for yourself. 

Liz
And that’s what she liked about it.

Nicole
Right. 

And so we really take from that something that we really feel strongly about, that that experiment has to be related to what they have been learning about, what they’re reading about. It’s causing them to wonder and question. And now that experiment is going to develop those ideas for the students. 

Emily
And they get that firsthand knowledge. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
And I think also it’s not that we do experiments for experiment’s sake, right? It’s connected to the idea, which is just what we mean when we talk about the uniqueness of a Charlotte Mason curriculum or her principles, they are few and simple to understand. 

Nicole
And that’s not to say that a student can’t do any other experimenting ever, but for our lessons this is what we’re doing. We really are laying this out. 

And I just wanted to note that they’re simple and it’s the child’s first practice at following the procedures carefully, which is going to be very important and really watching that scientific principle come to life. And for many kids this is like one of their favorite things in the week. So even though there’s a whole aspect for moms but just…

Emily
Well I was just reflecting on, you know, for Form 2, they have a lot more responsibility. They’re reading more of their books, they’re having to do written narrations, which is not generally something the kids love. Some do, but most have a hard time with that. They start doing more Grammar and Dictation and all these language art skills that are so demanding on their level, but then they get Science experiments. And for my kids, it’s been just a sweet, like this is their favorite thing. 

Nicole
Yes. 

So also let’s talk about Nature Study. Special Studies continue right alongside all of this and they really deepen in Form 2. Now this child is studying more of individual species. So while those younger kids were just like all the birds, now we want them to really follow a robin that comes early in the spring and makes a nest, and the babies are born and keep tracking that, or keep tracking a plant like Queen Anne’s lace that grows up and opens and then it closes back again and it opens again because then the seeds are going to be dispersed. 

So there’s these transitions that are happening and we’re wanting them to look at that. And that’s just developmentally the next stage for these kids. It’s an important part. 

And then just finally I would mention that another thing we see on the programs is that students are starting to read biographies and a Science biography is an excellent addition to their free reading. 

This type of book doesn’t take the place of this Science spine is what I call it. Charlotte Mason didn’t call it that, but the book that we’re using for their formal Science is truly teaching them about a Science concept. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
It is not the same as a biography, but a biography does have its place. It has an important value. 

Liz
Are you saying they would do that in their leisure time? 

Nicole
Yeah. During their free reading time.

Emily
Did Charlotte Mason assign Science biographies in her programs? 

Nicole
Yeah. Yeah. Not a lot. But occasionally– 

Emily
I’d just like to gauge how many of those you might want to do in a year. 

Nicole
I think that one a year is good all the way through school. I think they’re reading biographies about other topics, history and such, but just getting one Science biography in a year would be great. 

Emily
It’s very inspirational. 

So as far as our lesson format goes, they have still three lessons a week, but two of them are about 20 minutes and one is longer – 30 minutes. And so the way you have scheduled this out, Nicole, is Nature Lore is one of those 20 minute lessons, and reading from their term topic Science book is the other 20 minutes. And then they have that 30 minute lesson, which about every other week, or about half the term’s lessons, is going to be experiments that tie into the book, and then the other half you would read for their Special Studies. And then of course they’re continuing their afternoon Nature Study, so they’re outdoors every day, hopefully at some point making a note or something brief in their nature notebook and then maybe one longer lesson a week for a nature walk, which could be the object lesson, maybe do that a different day or whatever. But that’s the whole scope of their Nature Study and Science at this level. 

So for these lessons, we’re still following the same basic format. We recall the previous lesson, we incite some interest, arouse some interest in what is going to be done that lesson, they read, often to themselves or aloud to you, and then they narrate. And then you might even have a very brief, you could even call it an object lesson if it came out of the text, that’s even a short experiment just to demonstrate some principle that they read about. And then obviously a couple days later they will have their longer experiment. 

At this point they can do some written narrations too, so maybe they’re writing their narration on their book but they’re also kind of starting what will become a lab book but it’s still just their narration time. Even after they do an experiment they’re going to narrate what they did, what they discovered…they might draw a diagram something that’s kind of like a seed Science notebook which is going to really pick up in the next form.

So first of all, I have to brag about Nicole. She has taken all of the guesswork out of this. So here’s, for example, one term Science book. You might read The First Book of Sound and learn all about sound waves. And so, what Nicole has done is she has made Science study guides. So it will tell you what to read for your Nature Lore, what to read for your term Science book, pick a Special Study, she’s brought all those things together. 

And then she will have the experiments in here as well. And what’s so nice is she gives you a list at the very beginning that is all of the experiment materials that you’re going to need so you can actually gather those and have those on hand. And then you just follow along and she tells you exactly what you need to do each week. 

So that makes it really easy to prepare. You just have to, even each week…so there’s the whole book, the term’s worth of materials, but then she breaks that down: Here’s what you need just this week. And so you could gather those and know right where they are. Make sure you have cabbage or whatever it is on hand that you need. And so then you would just need to prepare by making sure you have those experiments or supplies on hand. 

What I have done, and actually share these with my Nature Club, Natural History club, I have put together Science boxes. And so this is something my kids know. I put a little list in the lid of what’s inside. I don’t cross off the things that are household supplies that we might need to gather. And I just know I need to gather all that. So I can look at that at the beginning of the week. My kids also know where to find everything. And that just makes it really easy for us to succeed in doing the experiments, which I know is a struggle for a lot of families. 

Nicole
It really ruins it if you don’t have the stuff because it’s just over. You can’t do it.

Emily
Yep. 

And then of course, you’re gonna continue to prepare an object lesson at most once a week for something in their Special Studies or Nature Study topics. 

So the resources I have to recommend, of course, would be the Sabbath Mood Homeschool Living Science Guides. What is so beautiful about these is she takes an actual living book that, some of them do really explain different experiments and you do refer to those too, but you also make it so much easier because you list out what we need and the procedure and you remind us to have our child recap the previous lesson and what they need to do as a written narration. So that would be the first thing.

Also at this stage, and really you can start this earlier, I just forgot to show it. A Calendar of Firsts that you can keep as a family and just a place to note those things that you see the first of each season. And so you know next year when you come along, you can oh, this is when the robins were nesting last year. Maybe they’ll be building a nest now, and we can go out and look for those. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Emily
The Handbook of Nature Study is still a very excellent preparation for object lessons for you. Do not be intimidated by the size of this volume, read the first 20 pages and then just look up whatever your Special Study is on. I just saw plantain as I was flipping through. So we have that growing all over our yard. I could do a little reading on that, prepare a couple object lessons, and we could do that if our Special Study was wildflowers.

Emily
And then of course, nature notebooks. And I showed these on our last episode, but if you’re just tuning in because you have a Form 2 student only, we prefer the Stilman and Birn because they are sewn bindings. They lay flat. The paper is a nice quality. Mine is a soft cover Alpha series that’s like an 8×10 inch. Nicole’s is like five by eight-ish, and it’s the Epsilon series and it’s hardcover, but still lays flat. So those are the resources that you would want to have on hand to do all of these lessons. 

What challenges were commonly– 

Liz
Well, you guys have covered a couple of things, you know, that I have thought of or heard quite often. One of them though is what if my fourth or fifth grader is still a really weak reader and is not independent? 

Emily
Sure. 

Liz
And I will just say there’s not a huge quantity of reading here. They’re reading a very short amount. And this is just the form where you begin guiding your children to follow directions, so you’re gonna have to help them learn to follow the step-by-step, and this is where they’re forming their independence. It’s where it’s developing. So you may have to work with some weaker readers more at the beginning but most kids by wouldn’t you say by sixth grade are handling that guide and the books just fine.

Nicole
It’s really a good transition time where it is. During that first part of Form 2, you’re having to do more with them, but by the end, they’re gonna be more independent at it, presumably. 

Emily
Yeah. I was just gonna tell about something from the end of this year. I have two students, one in Form 2 and one in Form 3, that are doing experiments, and we do those as our last lesson on Fridays, just because then if it goes long or cleanup or whatever, it just makes it easy. 

Liz
Uh-huh. 

Emily
I was trying to help the older one get a bunch of complicated stuff together. And my younger student was like, Well, it’s my time for my experiment. And he just pulled out the book and he started gathering all the things and following the steps. He’s at the end of fifth grade.

Nicole
That’s great. 

Liz
Well and I do have a lot of moms, you know, that will let their children read the book that goes with the guide, but they just skip all the experiments. And that is just a huge disservice because that is where they’re learning, they get to actually get their own hands involved. And they’re not complicated experiments and activities at all. 

Emily
It really makes it tangible.

Liz
It does. 

Nicole
I’m thinking of Charlotte Mason’s books and things. 

Emily
Yes. 

Nicole
This is one of the things. 

Emily
Yes. Yeah. 

Nicole
That’s important for your education. 

Emily
Right. 

Liz
And you don’t want your children to always be just reading and not getting involved.

And related to that is just moms wanting to just get a book of experiments, because they feel like they’re learning directions and how to handle equipment and measure things. 

Emily
Or they just like it. 

Liz
Yeah, or it’s appealing. And I would say those books may have their place as an activity for your children to do at other times. But like Emily said, you know, the experiment needs to enhance or develop the ideas that they got from the book.

Emily
Yeah. 

Liz
And so random experiments are not what it’s all about. It’s not just doing experiments, it’s about doing experiments about machines or electricity. Whatever idea they had just read about. 

Emily
We’ve covered a lot of ground so far in our Science series, but there’s still more to come. Next time we’re gonna look at the next stage, Form 3, or what we call middle school here in the United States.

What do Science lessons look like once formal schooling begins? Join us on the podcast in today’s episode as we explore the next step in our children’s education and how Science and Nature Study play an integral role for lower elementary students in years one through three.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

Eyes & No Eyes series by Buckley
(Yesterday’s Classics) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
Individual books in the series from each publisher on Amazon:

• Wild Life in Woods & Fields (Yesterday’s Classics) (Living Book Press)
• By Pond & River (YC)
• Plant Life in Field & Garden (YC) (LBP)
• Birds of the Air (YC) (LBP)
• Trees & Shrubs (YC) (LBP)
• Insect Life (LBP)

Nature Lore by Dallas Lore Sharpe:

• Fall of the Year (Yesterday’s Classics) (Amazon)
• Winter (Yesterday’s Classics) (Amazon)
• Spring of the Year (Yesterday’s Classics) (Amazon)

ADE Special Studies Rotation

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Nature Explorers:

• Rotation A
• Rotation B

Sabbath Mood Homeschool’s Calendar of Firsts

Nature Notebooks:

• Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover 8×10 (Emily’s favorite!)
• Stillman & Birn Epsilon hardcover 5.5×8.5 (Nicole’s favorite!)

Last Child in the Woods by Louv

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…

Liz
…Liz Cottrill…

Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.

Emily
We are in the middle of our series on Natural History, the word that Charlotte Mason most often used for Science and Nature Study. So we’re focusing in today on just Form 1, which is the first three years of formal education. So years or grades one, two, and three. Or children about six to nine years old.

So, Nicole, would you explain what the scope and sequence of lessons looks like for just these years? 

Nicole
Yes. 

So, Form 1, students begin with Nature Study and Nature Lore. So they’ve been doing Nature Study already, but Nature Lore is a new one here. And they are not introduced to the formal Science subjects, nor do they do lab experiments at this time. 

The two kinds of books, the Nature Lore books that were instrumental in these lessons, there are two of them. The primary one is Arabella Buckley’s books, and Arabella Buckley’s Eyes and No Eyes series in particular. 

Emily
Let me just hold those up right here. They’re in reprint by a couple different companies we recommend – Yesterday’s Classics and Living Book Press. 

Nicole
Yes. And Buckley’s books are special because she approaches plant and animal life with a genuine scientific eye. It is different from anything else out there really, and they are older, but again, it’s the common information that is the stuff the kids need to know. 

Some people have a little bit of trouble because she will start with a hook that is about maybe a bird that’s in England, but we have the same families of birds, just figure out what’s local to you. 

But immediately after that, she goes into more of the scientific information about the plant or animal or whatever she’s discussing. And and again, we just don’t see that in anything else. So really these are the Science books for kids this age, so it’s very important. 

Emily
Because it’s giving them those bigger ideas that they might not even be asking themselves when they see something outside. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
And at the end of each chapter, pretty much exclusively or across the board, she has a little prompt of what they should go out and try and find. 

Nicole
Yes. 

Emily
And my kids will often bring those up or – I have my last child doing this stage this year, it’s sad! But they’re always like we should look for such and such or mom, I found this. And those really hook them. 

Nicole
Yes. And these are really preparing the child for the formal Science lessons that are to come. I know we’re talking about nature things, but we’re doing them in a scientific way that’s setting that groundwork. 

So alongside Buckley, the second Nature Lore book is read every week. And here I like the Christian Liberty Nature Reader, which you have there. And book one is the one I like to use. And then Dallas Lore Sharpe’s seasonal books. So you’ve got Fall of the Year, Winter, Spring of the Year, and then there’s a summer one also. And these can be really valuable because it was important to Charlotte Mason that they study nature that is seasonal, that they’re looking at it from that perspective and getting to know the year. 

And then there is a third type of book that is more assigned related to their Special Study every year, but that’s going to change and Charlotte Mason would have used a flyer or pamphlet in this category but we have lots of books that we can just plug in. 

Emily
Just tell us a little bit about what a Special Study is for Form 1 students. 

Nicole
Yes. Special studies in Form 1 is going to be a deliberate study of something but it’s going to be broad. So we’re gonna look at wildflowers in general and and I in particular will look at you know maybe the Aster family of flowers but that’s still a hugely broad category of flowers. 

Emily
And at the same time, they’ll look at birds or trees or something like that. 

Nicole
So they’d have two or three of these topics every term, and they can either run one after another or they can run concurrently. And we would read a book about it, and we would do an object lesson about one of these things, and we’d go out and look for them and have a goal on our nature walk to find one, maybe enter something into our nature notebook about it. So there’s some things that go along with it, but it’s really a deliberate study of nature that they’re doing at this time rather than how we talked about in the Early Years, we see something interesting and let’s look at that. 

Emily
By the way.

Nicole
Very by the way, now we’re getting more deliberate about it, but in a broad way. 

So this pairing of the books that I mentioned really reflects the pairing that Charlotte Mason that we see in her own programs. It always gave Form 1 two streams of Nature Lore at once. Streams is a word we use. It’s not something Charlotte Mason used, but we’re gonna see that all the way through the Science subjects we do here. 

But the pattern that I see is that one was always more general, often about a region or a habitat. And then the other one was more about a specific group of plants or animals. You might have the hedgerow and birds, something like that. So you have this kind of pairing. The two do not need to relate to one another and they don’t need to coordinate with the term Special Studies. That’s the point of it. It’s more of a breadth, if I’m saying that word correctly. 

Emily
Yeah, to have a wide scope and really in Form 1, we’re trying to get them to intentionally look at everything they can come into contact with. 

Nicole
Yes, start really noticing, right? 

So nature walks, seasonal special studies, like we talked about, doing object lessons at this time. If a nature notebook hasn’t been started already, definitely starting that now. Making entries in there as often as possible. We’re really again, like you just said, trying to expose them to a lot of ideas, letting them make connections between a lot of things. And really, in some ways, this could be thought about as the experimental side of their Science, you know, when they’re out looking for things and paying attention to what they are noticing. 

Emily
Right, the Nature Study part.

Nicole
They’re learning really to observe something and ask questions, through the object lessons we’re teaching them to ask questions and then observe some more. And that is really what the scientific method is founded on. So this is really the beginning for them. 

Emily
Yeah. So the lesson format at this stage is three lessons a week, about 10 minutes. So they’re really short. And then of course afternoon Nature Study time. So the afternoon time, something every day. They’re spending hours outside every afternoon, and a part of that time is for Field Work, Charlotte Mason said. so we might do an object lesson. And then having a goal of about once a week to go on a longer nature walk out in nature maybe even beyond your backyard. 

So each of those three morning lessons though would be a different book. So you might do Dallas Lore Sharpe on one day and an Arabella Buckley book on another day and then something about your Special Studies on a third day. Or a Buckley book and The Christian Liberty Nature Reader on different days and then something on your Special Studies that third day. 

Charlotte Mason said that the real use of naturalist books at this stage is to give the child delightful glimpses into the world of wonders he lives in, to reveal the sort of things to be seen by curious eyes and to fill him with desire to make discoveries for himself. 

We in education circles, especially home education circles, we hear a lot about ordering our affections or teaching ourselves what we need to love. And I think of this as that’s what we’re doing with these books is we’re teaching our children what to look for and what to care about. 

Liz
Whetting the appetite.

Emily
Yeah. 

So then an individual lesson is like a typical book and narration lesson where you first want to recall what you had read about last time and say some tiny little thing that would just whet their appetite or arouse their interest in what you’re gonna be reading about that day, and then a short reading, which is less than half of the lesson time, maybe three or four minutes of that 10-minute lesson. So a very small amount of reading and then narration. 

And then those lessons, the object of them, the goal of them is to get them to be interested in something that they’re gonna look at outside, something that they might want to pursue more closely in an afternoon outside time. 

So in their afternoons, Charlotte Mason gave us some specific instructions that I just want to reiterate today. She said:

The teachers are careful not to make these nature walks an opportunity for scientific instruction, as we wish the children’s attention to be given to observation with very little direction. 

So they’re still trying to find out for themselves. And so the ideas are planted from their Nature Lore books that they read in the morning. And then just like you said, this is kind of their experimentation time, Nicole. They’re seeing if can I actually observe that for myself? And she goes on to say,

The nature-walk should not be made the occasion to impart a sort of Tit-Bits miscellany of scientific information. (3/237)

So I think that also takes a lot of pressure off of us as the teacher, where we feel like, we’re going to have to be saying so much stuff, or I remember reading the handbook of Nature Study and thinking, how do I remember all this stuff to tell? Well, you’re not supposed to. But again, we’re still following the child’s lead, just like in the early years, when if they have questions, we can say, well, let’s go figure it out together, or that might be the time if you do happen to know something else to say that right then.

So your teacher preparation at this age is really to look at the main idea in their Nature Lore book. Maybe you’re gonna find a specimen or a picture…maybe it’s talking about a bird that is in England and you could find another similar bird from the same family that we have where we live and maybe find a picture. Maybe it’s some plant that you really could find a specimen of and bring it in for something. 

I remember doing this with my son and it was a whole lesson on what they call, what do they call squash in England? 

Nicole
The gourd, or… 

Emily
The gourd and then there’s another word. 

Nicole
Yeah. It’s not coming to me. 

Emily
Whatever that is. I feel like it’s the French word, right? And it’s just been anglicized. But I actually brought a zucchini out and we cut it open to look at the same things because that’s what we have here and we just use a different word for it. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Emily
So you might want to do that occasionally, not every time, right? And then your other objective is to prepare an object lesson at most once a week, right? So this is not something that takes a lot of time. I’ve already showed you a lot of the books that we have used at this stage. And I want to tell you that Nicole at Sabbath Mood Homeschool has lists on all the Special Studies topics. We’ll also include a link to our Special Studies rotation so you can get an idea of what categories of things to look at each term for their Special Studies. 

And then Nicole has actually finally, I’m getting to use now with my last child, produced a guide to Special Studies, and Nature Study really. So it’s called Nature Explorers. And through here, you use that rotation. There’s book recommendations, but you also have prepared object lessons. So we get to watch you and follow along and do the object lesson with you, and then you give us goals or things to look for on our nature walks, nature notebook prompts and all of the things. So if Nature Study has seemed…undaunting? Daunting to you, you will be undaunted if you use Nature Explorers. 

Another resource that you would want to have at this age is a nature notebook. I, well both Nicole and I, love the Stillman and Birn series. The paper is archival. The books lay flat, which is so important when you’re trying to paint or draw or write. And the paper is thick enough that they’re not going to bleed through if you’re writing on one side and you have a drawing or vice versa, and it can take a watercolor drawing without warping. 

So I prefer the Stillman and Birn Alpha series. I get the soft cover kind that’s about an 8×10. Nicole, you like a smaller, it’s more of a five by eight, five by six…yeah, about 5×8. And it’s the Epsilon series with a hard cover, but again, still lays very flat and it’s sewn together. So these books are gonna last a lifetime. 

So what I do with my kids is they can keep nature notebooks, but they get less expensive materials and then they turn six and they graduate to getting an actual nature notebook and their own watercolor palette. And it’s like kind of a rite of passage in our house. 

So those are some resources that we can recommend for you. 

Liz
And you know, when I think of problems and questions that moms bring up, I thought of one while you were doing this, which is simply that most or a great deal of children this age can’t write, you know, and so you’re going to have to let them dictate to you. And you can put the words down in their nature notebook if you want to, right? 

Emily
Yeah, yep. 

Liz
Another thing that a lot of people feel is that nature isn’t enough and that there is a lot of homeschool Science curriculum out there for very young children. So what’s wrong with letting them do those books, actual Science books that have experiments and them and all that kind of thing? 

So many young textbooks though, I feel as we’ve looked them over, are very watered down and they talk down to children, which is what Charlotte Mason didn’t like about textbooks, and that the nature books really promote much more exciting exploration. Children are really more interested in the real world than just what’s on a page. And they develop  their curiosity a lot more, I think. 

And related to that, a lot of moms wonder what is wrong with having their second, third graders participate with older siblings doing their same Science experiments and labs with them. And I would just say that the caution there is…well there’s a couple of them. 

First of all, the child is enjoying the activity because like I said, they’re very interested in things, but they have not learned the associated or informing idea for which that experiment applies. And so it’s just a disconnected experience for them. 

Emily
Yeah. Also adamant we should not do it, right?

Liz
And Charlotte– Nicole, not Charlotte Mason. Nicole points out too that it’s gonna mean a lot more work for you because every time you have that child grow into those grades, you are going to have to find a new experiment that relates. And there is a lot of work, as Nicole well knows from producing this curriculum, into finding appropriate experiments. 

And related to what you were saying about the Arabella Buckley books, I hear a lot, you know, about why should we read these books about English birds or plants when we don’t have these species where I live? Or even within the United States, you know, people in Seattle will complain about having to read a book that shows something in Georgia or something like that. 

And like she said, all birds do have common characteristics. and Charlotte Mason also said that children learn so much by contrast, by seeing differences that’s what sticks out to them anyways. so they can notice how the bird in their backyard differs from the one they were reading about, but they still have common characteristics. And really what we want them to see is, you know, how does this caterpillar’s mouth work? They don’t have to necessarily be seeing the same exact thing.

I and I think of the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. He points out, I believe in that book, that most famous scientists and inventors had extensive exposure to nature as children. Experience is so important to sparking interest and later they really will want to know more about stars or cells or things like that.

Emily
Thanks for listening today. We hope you’ll tune in next week as we continue our look at Science and Nature Study in a Charlotte Mason education by turning our attention to Form 2 lessons, which is grades four through six, when new vistas open up for our students.