Charlotte Mason had great faith in us mothers to know what to teach our children and how. She said, “but the mother will find a hundred opportunities to teach geography by the way.” Indeed, the whole field of Pictorial Geography may be covered in this way. So stay tuned to today’s podcast to hear her ideas on how to go about this daunting feat while our children are still in the early years.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 1 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

ADE’s Out-of-Door Geography in the Early Years through Form 1 handout

The Hole in the Dike by Green

The Story about Ping by Flack and Wiese

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
Last week we began our series on Geography with a bird’s eye view of the whole subject. So today we’re going to start focusing in on the teaching of Geography at each level. And we’re of course going to start at the very earliest stage of a child’s development. So what people in the Charlotte Mason community call the Early Years, that time before formal lessons begin. 

And like Science, Geography is a subject that can and we probably should start introducing our children to these topics even in the early years because it can be done very naturally outside, as Charlotte Mason said, by the way. And we have all those long hours out of doors. So this is one of the ideas she had of how we can use that.

So we’re just going to be looking at those very earliest lessons today. Nicole, would you share what ideas we might consider introducing to our children? 

Nicole
Yeah, because there’s no book yet, and no map, they’re just really starting, like you said, with the early ideas outside their own home, their own neighborhood, and that area. Charlotte Mason said, 

There are certain ideas which children must get from within a walking radius of their own home if ever they are to have a real understanding of maps and of geographical terms. (1.73)

So that’s the whole spirit of this stage is really learning their own neighborhood. That is like their first Geography book. 

And like you said, like early Science and Nature Study, it’s outside and there’s no rigid sequence. Kind of like we talked about when we talked about the early years of Nature Study. It’s more of a menu for you to draw from. I like that you pointed out “a hundred things;” I’m like I maybe pick out five... 

There are resources for you of course but first here’s some ideas that we can pull from. The first is what Miss Mason called the Pictoral Geography and it’s as you’re out walking you teach Geography by the way:

A duck-pond is a lake or an inland sea; any brooklet will serve to illustrate the great rivers of the world; a hillock grows into a mountain––an Alpine system; a hazel-copse suggests the mighty forests of the Amazon; a reedy swamp, the rice-fields of China; a meadow, the boundless prairies of the West; the pretty purple flowers of the common mallow is a text whereon to hang the cotton fields of the Southern States. (1:72)

So you’re using those small things right in front of them to teach much larger ideas. And one thing that I loved about this is that you know how when you’re little and then you go back to something later in your life, you’re like, that was way smaller than I thought it was. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
And so I loved this idea because she’s just playing into what is natural for the children anyways. 

Then there’s simply noticing where the sun is in the sky, where it rises and where it sets and how that changes at different times of the year. Just some of those noticing things and then learning to tell time by it. So big ideas, but really introduced in a gentle way. 

There is the feel of distance that they’re getting. They love this because it’s done with their own feet and counting and so they walk familiar distances around the house and they get to know how far is a long way and a short way and we can calculate that. 

They start learning a sense of direction. Again, you know, where the sun rises, where it sets, and then from there they can learn some direction. They can start getting their bearings in that way. And that’s kind of that first map idea, which direction does the road run, you know, versus the river and things like that. They could even get a pocket compass at this time once they’ve learned these things, which is pretty exciting.

There’s also reading their own neighborhood, like where things are. And as he notices this, like what’s growing in the fields, what bounds them, then he can start to draw the maps in the dirt, like with a stick or his finger of what he is seeing around him. 

Emily
And of course we give that example first, like show them how that’s done. And we’re not expecting him to have that inherent knowledge, right? We think it’s inherent, but it really isn’t. You know, we had to learn it. 

Nicole
Yeah. Right. And so much better to learn it this way, you know, maybe even on a hill where you can see down at the neighbor’s field or the the road that’s, you know, near your house. So just a great way to very concretely give them a look at this. So just again rooted in their own place. 

And then this is just like Nature Study and Science, this is setting the foundation for what is to come. So it’s important work.

Emily
And you notice how intertwined the two are, ’cause even when they’re learning boundaries, it’s what’s growing in that field? You know, it’s so hard to pull apart what is Science and what is Geography. 

Nicole
Right, right. Yeah.

Emily
So remember, of course, these are lessons by the way, as Nicole just said, there is not a scope and sequence, there’s not a rigid order. It is what captures their attention and let’s help them get a bigger idea from what has captured their notice or what their attention is focusing on. 

So be on the lookout for ways to open your children’s eyes to something. Maybe it’s a mud puddle they’re splashing in, and after they have fun with that, you could just talk about how the puddle could be a pond or a lake or something like that.

Or they’re noticing ants building a little ant hill. And you could say, can you imagine how big that anthill must be to an ant? Can you imagine? And just pull on their imagination and then go, that’s how we feel when we’re climbing a really big hill or a mountain. We feel as small as the ant compared to that big hill.

So much imagination is used. So just be on the lookout. I think that’s our biggest lesson here as moms at this age. Be on lookout for what’s already captured their attention and then how can we sow the seeds of some of these ideas. I also like instead of just dirt and a stick, sidewalk chalk, which is just a fun play, you know, and a lot of people are like, Well, I don’t have a lot of dirt around me, I live in a concrete jungle or whatever, we live in the city. Sidewalk chalk is such a fun play that we already are doing with our kids, and we could turn that into drawing boundaries and some like basic sketch maps. 

And that these are just not, it’s not like we’re meticulously methodically teaching them how to read a map, but these are the initial ideas to give them a different perspective, right? Their perspective is I see the world from three feet off the ground, and so to think about things from a bird’s eye perspective, which is what maps do, it’s just a different skill. So play with it, have fun. 

And then as the opportunity– so I just I say that because I don’t want you to think that this is just silly. This is literally such important groundwork for what’s going to come in their lessons, and it’s very worth our time to do with our young kids. And so, as opportunities present themselves, just maybe consider where is the sun in the sky, and maybe once a month, look at you know, if you go out for your outside time after lunch or before lunch, notice where the sun is. And it changes through the year, unless you live on the equator. Well it still does even at that point, right? 

Or what direction their shadow falls, or where the sun rises and sets if you have opportunity to do that. Sometimes it’s really hard for us to do that because it’s way before or way after children are awake. But you can also consider weather, and again this is where all of these are Geography ideas, but they’re also Science ideas. So it’s very intertwined with your Nature Study outside. 

So, as far as resources, you will notice if you’re reading along with us none of this is covered in Volume 6, but it is very much covered in a section called “Outdoor Geography” in Volume 1. And so we gave you that chapter and those pages in our reading schedule, so you would have all of these ideas. 

And then we at A Delectable Education have taken those ideas and put them in kind of a logical progression. It’s obviously not rigid or anything, but it’s like they do need to have some concept of the sun rising and setting before you introduce the cardinal directions of the compass, for example, because that’s why we have them, right? 

And so there is a progression and it starts in the early years and it goes through Form 1. So they’re going to continue building on these ideas. But if you’re just at a complete loss of what kinds of things do I even talk about or introduce them to, that document is linked in the show notes. So take a look at that.

And like I said, Volume 1, “Outdoor Geography”, that is going to be invaluable to you just to get that big idea and hopefully inspire you to tackle some of these ideas with your kids. 

Liz
I think that’s one of the biggest questions that moms have is just if if someone asked you point blank for ideas about Geography with a little child, you would absolutely have no idea. 

Emily
Or we get wildly inappropriate and start this is how you measure longitude…

Liz
And part of it is that we have for the most part become city people and we’ve kind of disconnected from being outdoors as much as earlier generations. But even growing up in the city, I remember my mom telling me as a little child, when you can see the shadow of the house, you need to come home for dinner. You know, stuff like that. 

So just as you start to notice things, you’ll notice more and more things. You’re planting your garden and you talk to your children while you’re doing it about why the rows have to go this way across our yard and not the other way because we want the flowers to have the full sun from the south all day long, right? Little things like that. 

And Nicole, I think you mentioned driving, but you know, I used to ask my children, well, if we’re going north and we’re at a stoplight, if we need to go east, which way do we go? And it’s a fun game for them. You know, noticing how plants turn toward the sun. Children have little competitions with each other about whose shadow is the longest and things like that. 

So a lot of it is training ourselves just to be more alert. And I will say that children pick up on ideas even in their little picture books at this age. The Hole in the Dike was one that made a tremendous impression on me as a little child. Like, do you mean these people in Holland live in the ocean and have to keep it out? 

Emily
Yeah. 

Liz
You know, or The story about Ping and learning about China and the big river, the Yangtze and stuff like that. So there’s just myriad ways once you start paying attention. 

Emily
We had a map that was well loved and I finally had a throw away because it was just getting so beat up on the side of our refrigerator for I don’t know…I maybe got it when Jonah was two from the Target dollar spot. But it was just such, it looked nice, you know? It was just simple – the states, the names. I don’t even think it had capitals. Maybe it did, I don’t know. And he would sometimes ask me, what state’s this? And all the states were different colors. 

And I remember before he started school, so he was not reading, he recounted from memory all the states we would pass through going from where we lived in Virginia to Michigan for our trip. And then he did it for like if the Alabama cousins came, they would go through these ones. And just from taking it in. 

And so that’s not a ton of active teaching, right? But we’re just strewing these ideas and giving them contact with maps. And some kids are gonna be fascinated. We’ve known quite a lot of those who just– 

Liz
It was easier in the old days when your parents literally pulled a map down from the visor to check it out. 

Emily
I think I bought a road atlas at a used bookstore when we were up in Michigan just for something for my kids to look at you know, on the twelve hour drive home.

We hope you’re inspired to try some of Charlotte Mason’s ideas with your own young children today. Next week, we’ll start to look at Geography lessons for Form 1 students, the beginning of their formal schooling. We hope you’ll join us.

Today we’re embarking on a new subject series, one very adjacent to Science, but also adjacent to History. That is the subject of Geography. Join us today on the podcast to get an overview of this amazing subject’s scope and sequence across a child’s education, and find out why Charlotte Mason considered this the most delightful subject of all.

Listen Now:

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

ADE Season 12 Reading Schedule

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. (Laughs) Who goes first?

Emily
Today we are beginning our look at Geography, the subject that Charlotte Mason considered perhaps the most delightful subject of all. So we invite you to follow along with us as we work through this subject by reading the relevant sections of chapter ten in Volume six, which is her essay Towards a Philosophy of Education. And we have a reading schedule that is linked in the show notes so you’ll know exactly what pages to read for each week that we’re releasing an episode on the topic.

As we start out, we like to first consider what is the reason behind the subject or the philosophy that undergirds it ,since we’re talking about a philosophy of education. So why is Geography so delightful and why is it such a huge part of the curriculum? 

Well, Charlotte Mason and many other people have considered Geography to be the study that helps a child find their place in the world. Literally, like their actual physical location. But even broader than that, how they fit into their culture, how other cultures relate, how they relate to people who live very differently from them. And it does help them to develop an understanding of people in other places, which just gives them empathy and understanding of people who are different from themselves. 

So essentially, Geography provides this framework for building all other relationships, I kind of think, right? More than any other subject. It really is their physical identity, their cultural identity, their personal, individual, and also how they’re part of the group. It just…every relationship starts from there, right?

So there are two aspects to Geography teaching. There’s the physical nature of the earth itself and how that impacts how and where people live on the earth. And the second part is the people themselves. And so we think about cultures and nations, like political divisions of the globe, how they live and work in every corner of the globe.

Even scientists and geographers disagree on the definitions of certain things because some of it is more science related and some of it is more anthropological. And so these two are just two aspects of the same thing and they’re very enmeshed. We like to compartmentalize and divide everything up into neat and tidy little packages, and that just can’t happen with Geography. 

Charlotte Mason said that the peculiar value of Geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas and to furnish the imagination with pictures. And I think that gets to the heart of why she considered this subject so delightful, right? It helps inspire imagination. It fills our mind with living ideas and pictures that are worth thinking on, contemplating, and carrying with us.

So her method of teaching the subject she called a panoramic style, because she felt that it unfurled a vivid picture of the landscape of the world to her students. And so it gave a map of a country or a region to the child. So they would just have that in their mind whenever they heard a word, like the name of a country or a people group or something like that. They would have this whole panorama in front of them.

And then she also thought it provided him with a knowledge of general principles. So those principles would help him make deductions about how things might be in a place very different than somewhere that he had experienced. 

So, Nicole, will you give us the picture of how these ideas, these foundational principles of hers play out over the course of a whole student’s whole entire education? 

Nicole
Yeah. It’s like, how do we get there? This is a very inspiring idea, but how do we get there?

Emily
Yeah.

Nicole
Geography and this method, and you touched on this, runs along three streams side by side from the early years all the way through high school. The first stream is what she called pictorial Geography, and that’s living books that describe places in the travel book style that paint the peoples, the landscapes, the plants, and animals too, of far off lands. And again, so that the child could really picture them. 

Emily
Right. 

Nicole
And then the second stream was the Physical Geography, and the reason I’m recapping this is because this is where we’re going to actually spend our time, this is what we’re gonna do for the kids to get there. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Nicole
This is how the earth works, the sun and the seasons, the day and night, mountains and rivers, things like this. And really that’s kind of that science side of things. 

And the third stream was the map work, learning to read and make maps, drawing plans, working with a globe and an atlas, and eventually even finding their way with the tools of the map world and using them. 

So all of those run all the way through. But it begins like many things in this method, which is outside. 

Emily
Yes. 

NIcole
Which is so cool. In the early years before any books at all are used, the child is simply noticing what’s happening in the world around them, watching the sun cross the sky, feeling how far a mile is underfoot, like learning distance that way, which way is north and south, and then even like using a twig to scratch little maps in the dirt. So it’s just all outside.

And then in Form 1, those first books are introduced to the child. They begin reading the living Geography. And it’s really like this initial tour of the world through a child’s eyes, something they can really relate to even though they are kind of far-flung places. And then they also have Charlotte Mason’s own little book of Physical Geography, and they start making maps, and then they start using their hands to make maps, little landforms like in sand and drawing simple plans and things like that. So it’s really an introduction to it.

And just follow along because I love how these all build on each other. So in Form 2, this is where the child learns to know their own country intimately, going region by region. And Miss Mason was really set on this because when they know a place well, they can then learn about other places in the world by either comparison or contrast. So they need to know their place well. So that is what Form 2 is just all about. 

Then Form 3 is when it starts to explode. So this is your grades seven, eight, and nine, Forms 3-4. And now they move from their own country to their whole continent. And we’re gonna talk about a variation we recommend on this in the episode that is on Forms 3 and 4. But also at this level in Physical Geography, it grows into a real science at this time. And they are really testing and experimenting with some things. 

And then Forms 5-6, so that’s 10, 11th, and 12th grade in high school, the students are traveling through living books. They are looking at a continent, but now that continent isn’t their own. They’re moving out from there looking at the other continents of the world. And then they actually learn to navigate with the real tools of the trade for geographers. And even their map work changes a touch here where they’re not doing the map questions, but they are using the maps in like real life ways. 

So I hope you can just see that they’re starting–

Emily
It’s a panorama.

Nicole
It’s a panorama, but it’s also this progression. And like you said, I love that word unfurling…I know my backyard. Now I know my country. Or my county even, or state. And now I know my continent. And just going out and really knowing the world really well this way. 

Emily
Yeah. 

Well, we will talk about at each level some common questions or concerns that people have in teaching Geography, but what are some of the big geographical, maybe objections to how Charlotte Mason did Geography or questions or just what kind of disconnects do people have when they try to tackle this subject? 

Liz
I think it’s pretty basic to our view of education in general. And she talks about having too utilitarian of a perspective on Geography. Most of us just think of it as a school subject. And I love how she emphasizes in Volume six that we lose the awe and the wonder and the beauty and just the variety and diversity in the way the world looks, you know, its structure, but also in all the people and places and different ways of life.

Emily
I thought it was really interesting because I was reminded in rereading through this section that the quote you always say, unless a subject or unless science teaches a child to awe and wonder, it’s failing basically. I’m here paraphrasing Charles Mason. That’s in the Geography section. It’s so interesting. 

Liz
And so we’ve kind of divorced the subject from you know… 

Emily
From awe and wonder. 

Liz
Facts and not real life. And also I think a lot of people think that Geography is irrelevant. You know, we have GPS. Why is this really necessary? And which I think is similar to saying, Well, we have calculators and computers. Why do we need to teach children basic math? 

Emily
Right. 

Liz
We have a trust in machines. 

Nicole
I’m gonna take it a step further, that you could say well, I have a family, why would I need to know anybody else in the community of the world?

Liz
Yeah. and I think a lot of times we remember our own dreary drill schooling and we just think of it as memorization of names and places and maybe boundaries to pass tests. 

Emily
Yes. And exports and population density. 

Liz
Yeah. And we just don’t realize how it’s behind a lot of the major issues in the world right now. Reasons for wars and understanding cultures and why other people have such strong feelings that we don’t on certain topics. And even just the way we live, our economics, are tied to the place that we live. 

So I think it is really practical, but to just view it as we have to live on this earth and that’s all we need to know is kind of short-suiting ourselves. 

Emily
Yeah. We’re recording this during the summer of 2026 when we in North America are hosting the World Cup and people from all over the world are coming to America. And it’s so interesting how their stereotypes are confronted and confirmed or just honed a little bit, and just the things that they thought about America before they arrived here and what they’re coming up with. 

And I think that has given us a window onto ourselves, right? To see ourselves through somebody else’s eyes is often what is needed. Because we are just like the frog in the boiling water. We don’t know what we don’t know about ourselves and we lose that perspective. And I think the study of Geography, how we go about it in Charlotte Mason can really help give us that bigger picture and also understanding of ourselves, and hopefully kindle a healthy affinity for the place that we come from. 

Nicole
Right. And also I mean just on a bigger scope sometimes just the Charlotte Mason method in full gets some pushback because it maybe isn’t global enough. And I think that this is where it really becomes global.

Emily
Yes, when you understand what she was doing with Geography and how you see this is exactly how we can…

Liz
You could never make that accusation again. 

Emily
She gets criticized for being, you know, a product of her day, which was imperialistic Britain. And the fact that she put such emphasis on all these other places at this time, I think, really kind of debunks that. And she was ahead of her time. Even as much as she was a product of her time, she was very forward thinking and I think that we can just pick that up and continue with it in our global society. 

We are so glad that you joined us for this discussion of Geography lessons across a child’s education. Just like Science, Geography lessons begin even before our children have started school, as Nicole mentioned earlier. So we hope you’ll join us next time to learn about what we can and ought to open our children’s eyes to about the world around them.

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.