Practical Science

This course is a survey of how the physical world actually runs — matter, energy, electricity, motion, weather, the body, and living things — built on one spine question: how do we know? The opening unit teaches the method deliberately: making a testable guess, running a fair test that changes one thing, distinguishing correlation from causation, weighing a claim read online, and keeping an honest notebook. Every unit after puts that habit to work on the everyday world, from why ice floats to what happens when an engine fires or a cut heals. Lessons run 45–60 minutes plus an activity, and every unit includes an experiment using household materials only — no hazardous chemicals, with the few boiling-water and battery steps flagged for supervision. Several experiments run over days or weeks, such as a barometer logged for a week or plants grown under different conditions, which is where the real lab hours accumulate.

Students keep a lab notebook with the same six headings for every experiment — question, hypothesis, materials, procedure, data, conclusion. The capstone comes in the final unit: the student plans, runs, and writes up an original experiment of their own design, the piece that makes the course defensible as a lab science on a transcript. Families can also run it lighter as a scientific-literacy elective, letting the reading and claim-evaluation thread carry the credit.

The full course opens September 1. Founding Families watch the ladder fill in — at a price that never moves.