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Does The Story Weavers Include Science?

Yes. And it might not look like what you expect.


In this post


We have received this question: Does The Story Weavers include science? The short answer is yes. Every level, every book, every month. As named topics in the Monthly Overview (Click Here to find the Skillmaps for each level), as hands-on experiments in the Deep Dives (Check out our samples by clicking here), and as scientific thinking woven through every chapter. You do not need a separate science curriculum to use TSW.


The longer answer is worth reading, because the way science lives inside TSW is intentional, and it explains something important about why this curriculum works the way it does.

FAQ

Before we show you what science looks like inside TSW, here are the most common concerns we hear, answered directly.



Do I need to buy a separate science curriculum?

No. Science is a named, documented strand in every TSW book. The topics are listed in the Monthly Overview so you can record them for your homeschool documentation. TSW is designed to be your complete curriculum, and that includes science.

Is it enough to meet homeschool requirements?

Yes, for the vast majority of families. TSW covers life science, earth science, physical science, and scientific thinking across K–8. The topics are documented clearly in each book, making state reporting straightforward. Families with specific advanced science requirements for high school may choose to supplement at Levels 7 and 8.

I'm not a science person. Can I still teach this?

Absolutely. Every experiment comes with complete step-by-step instructions written for a non-expert parent. TSW is designed so you and your child discover things together. You are not expected to know the answers before you begin — that's part of the design.

Is the science secular?

Yes, fully. All TSW science reflects current scientific understanding: evolution, the age of the Earth, climate science, human biology. No religious framing anywhere.

Do I need to buy extra science supplies?

Almost never. TSW experiments are designed around materials you already have at home: water, bowls, food coloring, ice, salt, a plastic bag. The Monthly Shopping List gives advance notice when anything specific is needed.

What Counts as Science — and What TSW Covers


This is a question worth taking seriously. "Science" in a homeschool context often gets reduced to worksheets about the water cycle or a unit on the solar system. But science as a discipline is much broader than that. And knowing what science actually includes helps you evaluate whether any curriculum — TSW or otherwise — is genuinely covering it.


What science education includes A complete K–8 science education covers content across four main branches — and teaches the habits of mind that make science possible in the first place.

Life Science

Biology, anatomy, ecosystems, animal behavior, plants, cells, evolution, food webs, conservation

Earth Science

Weather, the water cycle, geology, biomes, oceans, climate, natural resources


Physical Science

Forces, motion, energy, electricity, magnetism, matter, chemistry, light, sound

Scientific Thinking

Observation, prediction, hypothesis, data recording, evidence-based reasoning, questioning, iteration


TSW covers all four. The content branches appear in every level's Monthly Overviews. The scientific thinking strand is built into every single chapter through TSW's Socratic Method approach — making observation, prediction, and evidence-based reasoning a daily habit, not a separate subject.



Science Across the Levels: What Gets Covered

Here is a sample of what the science strand covers across TSW levels, drawn directly from the Monthly Overviews in the books. This is documented science — visible, recordable, and assessable.


Level

Science Topics Covered (sample from across the year)

Level 1

Buoyancy and density · Forces and motion · Wind and weather · Ocean ecosystems · Humpback whale biology · Mouse anatomy · Water cycle · Electricity and its history · Forest science · Feathers and oils · Decomposers · Oil spills · Greenhouse gases · Capillary action

Level 3

Animal anatomy · Osmosis · Elephant toothpaste reaction · Seeds and berries · Bear biology and habitats · Rainforest ecosystems · Mountain geology

Level 4

Wolf anatomy and life cycle · Animal tracking · Worm farm ecosystems · Senses science · On the Origin of Species (evolution) · Animal population and migration

Level 7

Structure of atoms · Atomic number and mass · The periodic table · Chemical symbols and formulas · Water chemistry · Chemistry in everyday systems

Level 8

Forces: calculating force, friction, air resistance · Potential vs. kinetic energy · Conservation of energy · Electric circuits · Ohm's Law · Electric current and voltage · Conductors · Controlled experiments · Hypothesis testing · Evaluating scientific data


The science strand is not random. It is planned to match the geography, literature, and critical thinking themes of each book — so a unit set in Antarctica covers polar science, a unit about Thomas Edison covers the history of electricity, and a unit set in the Amazon covers rainforest ecosystems. The content is always connected to something meaningful.



What Science Actually Looks Like in the Books


What does science actually look like inside a The Story Weavers Curriculum? The answer is that it does not look like one thing. It looks like five different things — and the five examples below are each drawn from Book 1 of different Levels, so you can open the book yourself and see exactly what we mean.


Each sneak peek below shows a different way science is practiced in TSW. Each one comes from Book 1 of a different level — so parents at any stage can find a familiar entry point and see the evidence for themselves.


1

Science as Observation and Questioning

Hypothesis → Test → Revision is structurally embedded

Level 8 · Book 1 · Month 1  |  Reading: A Long Walk To Water

Sneak Peek

Real Investigations


Science does not begin with an experiment. It begins with a question—and a prediction made before the answer is known. Learners are consistently asked: What do you think will happen? Why? Each time a learner is asked to pause and decide what they think will happen and why, they are forming a hypothesis. They then test it, observe what actually happens, and adjust their thinking if needed. That sequence—question, prediction, test, revision—is the scientific method. Not as a diagram on a wall, but as a repeated structure the child actively runs themselves. It appears again and again, across levels, becoming more precise, more independent, and more rigorous over time.


The fact that the answer comes from the child’s own observation rather than the back of a book is not a small detail. It is the whole point. A child who predicts, tests, and writes their own conclusion—whether about inertia, motion, or any other idea—builds a different kind of understanding. Those who had to predict it, test it, and write it themselves, will carry that understanding differently than a child who read it on a worksheet. TSW builds that kind of knowing into every science encounter across every level..


Friction

Calculating Force

Inertia

Evaluating Scientific Data

Hypothesis Testing


2

Connected Learning

Science Is a Way of Thinking

Level 1 · Book 1 · Month 1   

Sneak Peek


Science Is a Way of Thinking

Science is not a set of experiments. It is a way of thinking about what is true.


A child who learns to ask, What can I actually observe? What is my evidence? Could this be wrong? is doing science—even in a conversation, even in a story, even in a disagreement. That way of thinking shows up everywhere: in social situations, where ideas are tested against evidence; in history, where events are examined from more than one side; in everyday moments, where curiosity turns into questions and questions turn into understanding.


This is the structure behind everything. It repeats, it deepens, and it becomes more precise over time—until thinking carefully is no longer something a child is told to do, but something they naturally do.


Asking Questions

Evidence

Observatioion

Cause/ Effect

Revision


3

First Principle Thinking

From Facts to Principles

Level 3 · Book 1 · Month 1   

Sneak Peek

First Principle Thinking

While reading Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor, children encounter Frank — a kid engineer who builds robots from junk and solves problems by understanding how things work from the ground up.


Children build a working catapult from popsicle sticks, a rubber band, and a spoon. The Big Question is: How does the angle of the catapult affect the distance the object is launched? But before they collect a single measurement, the book stops them. Three problems need solving first. How will you decide where the object lands if it bounces? How will you keep the pressure you apply consistent across every test? How will you account for the fact that a ball cuts through air differently than a feather? Each of these has to be thought through — not looked up — before the data means anything.


We consistently asks children to reason from underlying causes before testing. Not "what happened?" but "why did that happen, and what rule explains it?" The catapult asks them to isolate variables before collecting data — which is exactly what first-principles thinking requires. Children build a working catapult from 9 popsicle sticks, a plastic spoon, and rubber bands. Then they have to solve three problems the book doesn't solve for them: how to measure where an object lands when it bounces, how to keep the force of their throw consistent across tests, and how to account for air resistance between objects. These aren't hints — they're genuine variables the child has to think through before the data means anything.




Forces & Motion

Variables in Testing

Air Resistance

Angle & Trajectory

Iteration as a Method


4

Real World Science

Science Is All Around Us

Level 5 · Book 1 · Month 1   

Sneak Peek

While reading Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte, children follow Cici — a Taiwanese girl trying to win a cooking competition to bring her grandmother to America. Then the book turns your kitchen into a chemistry lab. Children read a real article on the Maillard reaction, extract its main ideas, and build a keyword outline from it. Then they bake the same cookie dough at four different temperatures and observe what changes. They cook sugar syrup to four different heat stages and record how the texture shifts at each one. They test pH strips on ten household liquids and classify each as acidic, neutral, or alkaline. They isolate salt, fat, and acid separately, taste each one alone, combine them in pairs, and then reconstruct the full recipe to answer the month's Big Question: How do salts, fats, and acids work together to create sweet flavors?

The structure: the world is the lab. The kitchen was always a chemistry lab. TSW just points at it.

The science is never separate from the story. The story creates the motivation, the experiment creates the evidence, and the child produces the conclusion. And the whole thing is anchored in a real Taiwanese-American experience that gives the chemistry cultural weight.

So the principle is not just "hands-on science" and it is not "real chemistry." It is something more specific: the world is the lab. Science in TSW does not happen in a dedicated science block with a dedicated science curriculum. It happens inside a story about a girl missing her grandmother, inside a kitchen that is already in your house, using ingredients you already own. The chemistry was there all along. TSW just points at it and says: look closer. The browning of bread, in the tang of lemon juice, in the texture of a cookie pulled two minutes too early. A child who understands why their cookie came out flat is not memorizing a fact. They are reading the world. That is what TSW builds, across every level, in every kitchen, on every playground, at every aquarium: the habit of noticing what is already there.




Maillard Reaction

pH

Carmalization

Chemical Reactions

Phase Changes



Why We Believe This Approach Works

Traditional curriculum separates subjects because it's easier to organize and assess. Science gets Tuesday. Geography gets Wednesday. Reading gets every day. But children's brains don't work that way. Connection is how learning becomes permanent.

When your child learns about buoyancy because a fictional mouse needed to build a submarine to solve a mystery, they're not just learning physics. They're learning that physics is interesting. That science answers real questions. That curiosity is a tool.

That's a different outcome than a worksheet about forces and motion. And it's the outcome we're building toward, book by book, month by month, across every level of the program.

We've been working with homeschooling families since 2018. We've seen what happens when children encounter science as part of a story. They lean in. They ask questions. They come back to the idea days later. And they remember it — not because they were tested on it, but because it meant something.

That's what we're after.


 
 
 
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