Science Charlotte Mason Style

Just like in teaching history, living books and narration can be a foundation for a science education. In fact, living books are a key component to teaching many subjects in the Charlotte Mason Method. 

What is a living book?

A living book is a book that makes the subject come alive. It is usually written by one author who has a passion for the subject, rather than a committee who has been hired to dispense facts. A living book touches the emotions and fires the imagination, making it easy to see in your mind’s eye the events that are being described. It contains ideas, not just dry facts. A living science book should make it easy to picture what is being talked about.

Miss Mason did sometimes use a textbook for high school level science topics, for some science is just fact and cannot be adequately explained in story format. Even then, however, we can enrich the textbook learning with a good living book so that he can relate personally to the subject and want to learn more details.

So after reading a portion of a living science book, what do you do? You require the child to narrate. He should tell back in his own words everything he can remember from the reading. Narration demands a much higher thinking level than true/false, multiple choice, or fill-in-the-blank questions. You are asking the child to pay full attention and compose a mental essay, in a sense. Narration may seem easy until you try it for yourself, so you might want to do it yourself to see how it feels. 

Don't expect a full essay narration the first year you begin narrations, but it will build and grow and become more natural to your student.

Examples of Living Science Books

books by Thornton W. Burgess

books by Clara Dillingham Pierson

James Herriot’s Treasury for Children

Gentle Ben,Walt Morey

Rascal, Sterling North

Owls in the Family, Farley Mowat

books by Jeanne Bendick

 books by John Hudson Tiner

books by David Macaulay

books by Donald Silver

Pasteur's Fight Against Microbes, Marie Curie's Search for Radium

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas

The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics

The Boy who Drew Birds

What is Smaller than a Pygmy Shrew?, How Do You Lift a Lion?, Is a Blue Whale The Biggest Thing There Is?

How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the Earth

How Ben Franklin Stole The Lightning

The Mystery of the Periodic Table

Archimedes and the Door of Science, Along Came Galileo, Galen and the Gateway to Medicine

Listening to Crickets

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean

Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History, Penny Le Couteur

Do you have any more living science book suggestions?

Have you ever tried living books and narration in your homeschool?

Some Good Charlotte Mason Blogs:
Handbook of Nature Study and Harmony Fine Arts
Living Charlotte Mason in California