Physical Science (Charlotte Mason)

Charlotte Mason taught science the way scientists actually learned it — by looking closely at the world and describing what they saw before anyone told them what to think about it. A candle flame isn’t just hot. It has zones. The blue part behaves differently from the yellow part. The wax does something specific before it burns. Faraday built an entire lecture series from that kind of attention, and it’s the same instinct these worksheets cultivate.

Every week opens with two nonfiction passages written in the living book tradition. Not textbook explanations — stories about a grandmother’s kitchen where butter melts and eggs solidify, a mountain stream where ice becomes water becomes vapor, a cooper shaping barrel staves with tools his grandfather used. The science is real and rigorous. The voice is human.

What the Nine Weeks Cover

The program begins where CM science always begins: observation. Week 1 asks students to notice what happens when matter changes state — not memorize a phase diagram, but describe what they see in a pot of boiling water. Week 2 introduces density and physical properties through natural phenomena and mineral identification.

Weeks 3 and 4 shift to forces and motion. Friction on ice versus pavement. Why a pendulum swings the way it does. How a cheetah’s physics differ from an elephant’s. The calculations are there (speed, force), but they follow the observation, not the other way around.

Energy takes center stage in Weeks 5 through 7. Kinetic and potential energy at a campfire and in the food we eat. How heat moves through a cast-iron pan versus a wooden spoon. The energy chain from ancient sunlight to coal to a blacksmith’s hammer strike. Week 7’s waterfall passage traces gravitational potential energy through every conversion it makes on the way down.

Week 8 is about the craft of scientific observation itself — Faraday’s candle lectures as a model for how careful looking reveals what casual glancing misses. Week 9 integrates everything in a capstone that connects a forge and a river to every concept from the program.

For CM Families

Narration comes first on every worksheet. Describe what happened before you analyze why. Observation journal prompts suggest things students can actually do at home — hold a metal spoon and a wooden spoon in hot water, watch ice melt on different surfaces, time a pendulum. The science is hands-on even when the worksheets are paper-based.