The study of physics from the Waldorf perspective is one of experience and observation followed by explanation, review and lesson work. Lessons are delivered with demonstrations. The apparatus is then quickly removed and the demonstration is explained by the teacher as the student relives the demonstration through the imagination. The lesson experience lives within the student until the following day when the lesson is revisited and finally written down which also includes artwork. 

Get an exclusive sneak peek at the Physics video series here! Take a look inside the course page to see all the resources available to you.

This video course series includes dozens of videos for physics with topics ranging from Acoustics, Optics, Thermodynamics, Electricity and Magnetism and Mechanics.

This course includes information on how to set up a physics lesson, materials to perform physics demonstrations, additional books, biographies and resources, and dozens of physics video demonstrations. Be sure to check out the video previews to see what’s included and get a sneak peek at the richness of this course.

This video series is self directed. Lessons can be done in any order if you wish. Each topic area includes a video explaining and showing the resources used for that subunit. The course page includes links to the products we’ve used. Course page also includes two haul videos with science materials from Ward’s Science and Educational Innovations.

There are currently 35 videos with another 20 videos to come!

There are seven videos showcasing the resources for these physics labs. Here’s a preview video which briefly shares the five categories of topics being covered in physics as well as a glimpse at the books, materials and additional resources used for the demonstrations.

Physics Materials

Materials from this video

For the first time we are ordering from Ward’s Science. I’m very pleased with the materials we purchased. We bought Resonance pipes, Heat Conductor, Crystal Radio kit, Heat Transfer Balls, Wood and Metal Cylinder, and Ball and Ring Apparatus.

Materials from this video

This is the second time we are ordering from Ward’s Science. This time we ordered a few materials for our Electricity and Magnetism lessons. We ordered a number of rods of differing materials to compare static electricity: Stirring polypropylene rod, acrylic rod, hollow glass rod, solid glass rod and nylon rod. We also got a horseshoe magnet, a digital scale, concave mirror, convex mirror and test tube drying rack.

We also bought from Educational Innovations for the second time. The first time was for just a couple items which I didn’t share here, but it was the balancing eagle, an item from this Force and Motion kit, the centripetal spinner, Wind Gyro and polarized lense. For this haul, we bought some awesome kits!! The first one I want to share is the Magnetic Accelerator. We also got the Wave Modeling Spring, Eddy Current Rods, Egg in a Bottle, Harbottle Differential Pressure Demonstrations, Energy Chimes, DIY Galileo Thermometer, Magnetic Lodestone, Iron Filings, and the lung demonstration (which would be ideal for an anatomy unit).

For physics main lesson block involves doing a demonstration each lesson, followed by drawing and writing about it in the following lessons. While most of our lessons in optics, thermodynamics and acoustics don’t need special equipment, I am happy to add these kits and materials for some experiential lessons. Some items like the egg in a bottle or snaky waves can be DIYed, I like having the prepwork taken care of for as many projects as possible since I’ll be spending time assembling other hands on activities.

For this course, I’m using Heat, Light and Sound An Introduction to Physics by Live Education! Physics II Electricity, Magnetism, Mechanics, Acoustics and Optics by Live Education! Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 6 by Roberto Trostli, Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 7 by Roberto Trostli, and Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 8 by Roberto Trostli. I have relied on these resources heavily when putting together my lesson plans and demonstrations. I highly encourage you to add these resources to your library. I’m also adding Mel’s Science Physics Kit because we enjoyed our Mel’s Science Chemistry subscription so much. Now Mel’s has a monthly physics kit which we are eager to try out.

How to Set up Your Physics Lessons

Day 1: 

20 min. Opening Activities-mental math, games, etc. 

20 min. Brief introduction of today’s lesson. Physics demonstration. Remove apparatus as soon as demonstration is complete.

20 min.  Explain demonstration and what happened. Let the students relive the experience in their imagination.

Day 2: 

20 min. Opening Activities-mental math, games, movement math etc. 

20 min. Review of previous lesson (oral)

30 min. Artistic work for previous lesson 

20 min.  New demonstration. Remove apparatus as soon as the demo is complete.

20 min. Explanation of demonstration.

Day 3-30: 

15 min. Opening Activities-mental math, games, movement math etc. 

15 min. Review of previous lesson (oral)

60 min. Artistic work for previous lesson and written work from lesson two days previous (thinking capacity is heightened).

15 min.  New demonstration. Remove apparatus as soon as the demo is complete. During the demonstration the willing capacity is awakened.

15 min. Explanation of demonstration. The feeling capacity is engaged. 

Modified from the book Physics the Waldorf Way by Roberto Trostli

Books and Materials

Amazon Affiliate links used on this page

Curriculum

• Heat, Light and Sound An Introduction to Physics by Live Education!
• Physics II Electricity, Magnetism, Mechanics Acoustics and Optics by Live Education!
• Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 6 by Roberto Trostli
• Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 7 by Roberto Trostli
• Physics the Waldorf Way Grade 8 by Roberto Trostli

Games for Opening Activities

• Professor Noggin’s Wonders of Science – Educational Trivia Card Game for Kids 

Acoustics

Sound, Vibrations and Musical Instruments

What do you hear when there is no sound? A soft ringing? Nothing at all? Does the silence get to you? Maybe if you grew up in a bustling city, the quiet country night would feel unsettling. Or what if you’ve never been to a big city and all of sudden it’s none stop noise? We grow accustomed to what we are used to and being in a suburb is what I and my children are used to. It’s the middle ground of noise. During the day we hear gardeners and occasionally a firetruck or police siren. Some friends live near highways so the sound of cars and trucks make up their background noise. On a spring morning, we are gifted with the sound of birds singing to their mates. What else can we appreciate about sound? Have you listened to an orchestra? Have you tried to pick out the string or wind instruments? How about listening for time and numbers? Remember pendulum clocks? They may be a thing of the past, but once they used to tell the whole town what time it was. You could listen for how many times the clock chimed or the bells rung out. Listening for pitch and tone is something else that can be done in the study of acoustics.

• Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of Physics
• Clang!: Ernst Chladni’s Sound Experiments (Moments in Science)
• Story of the Orchestra : Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music!
• Pythagoras and the Ratios: A Math Adventure

Video Demonstrations on Acoustics

To see the videos and lesson ideas you can purchase the video series here.

Optics

Light, Waves and Color

How different would our life be if we didn’t have light? Our life depends on it and as we learn about it, our fascination grows. I’ve added a few additional resources in our study of light by adding in Quantum Physics and the Theory of Relativity. While these are stretches to the topic and may be better placed elsewhere in Physics, I chose to include them in this video. You may wish to add them later or not at all. I also like to add picture books to our units even though they are not traditionally Waldorf. I add them because in our homeschool we still use a lot of living books. Often my children won’t even look at the pictures though! If you wish to stay more authentic to the Waldorf philosophy, use the picture books as resources for yourself to orally narrate to the children during your opening activities. I tend to do a lot of reading aloud and hands on projects for most of our main lesson blocks and unit studies. I also try to add biographies whenever possible. For this unit, I added the biographies of Einstein, Curie and Edison. Many of of our hands on projects for this part of our Physics main lesson block involved simple demonstrations we materials we made on our own.

• Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of Physics -Book
• My First Book of Quantum Physics -Book
• Eclipse: How the 1919 Solar Eclipse Proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity – Book
• My First Book of Relativity -Book
• On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein – Book
• Who Was Albert Einstein? -Book
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? -Book

Video Demonstrations of Optics, Light and Color

To see the videos and lesson ideas you can purchase the video series here.

Thermodynamics

Heat, Movement, Friction

Have you watched a candle burn? It’s glowing light is one beautiful sight we can enjoy, and if you are looking at it through science colored glasses then you’ll see so much more! In our thermodynamics Physics lessons during our main lesson block, we are going to explore heat transfer, burning, expansion and more. We took a little detour with these materials and included lenses and optics and telescopes as well which is a great call back to our optics lessons. The biographies we focused on were on Faraday and Galileo. After putting this video together, I recognized I could have used more resources. Since then, I’ve added a few more materials to this unit on Heat and Thermodynamics.

• Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of Physics
• Burn: Michael Faraday’s Candle (Moments in Science)

Video Demonstrations for Thermodynamics

To see the videos and lesson ideas you can purchase the video series here.

Electricity and Magnetism

Have you used a lemon to create electricity? Bent water with a plastic rod or made a balloon stick to a wall after rubbing it on your head? It won’t work if you’re bald! But rubbing a balloon over hair will cause the electrons to become imbalanced, just like storm clouds. Thankfully we won’t shock ourselves too badly when the electrons equalize and produce a static shock. The study of electricity and magnetism is one of more awe invoking fields of Physics in my opinion, and we love the projects we’ve done to experience and seeking understanding in electromagnetism. In addition to living books and resources, we love to add kits to our Unit Studies and Main Lesson Blocks because it brings our lessons to life. Hands on projects leave a lasting impression on the student and it’s an opportunity to bring connection with the material being learned.

• Usborne Understanding Science Electricity and Magnetism 
• Faraday: Pioneer of Electricity
• Magnets & Electricity: Super Science Activities; Grades 2-5
• The How and Why Wonder Book of Science Experiments
• Who Was Nikola Tesla?
• Who Was Thomas Alva Edison?
• The Story of Thomas Alva Edison (Landmark Books)
• Scientific Explorer Electro Magnetix Kit
• Magnetism Adventure kit
• Science Magnets (Science Activities) (Usborne Science Activities)
• Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of Physics

Video Demonstrations for Electricity and Magnetism

To see the videos and lesson ideas you can purchase the video series here.

Mechanics

Forces & Loads, Buildings & Structures, and Machines & Tools

We use physics everyday, even when you are not expecting it. Using machines, or tools as we commonly refer to them, to help us move loads horizontally or vertically isn’t something we give a second thought to. Screw drivers, incline planes, and levers are in our home almost daily, and gears are used in our automobiles to help us get around. And if you wish to be environmental and skip using cars, you may wish to get around on a bicycle or a skateboard in which case wheels and axles are in motion.

• Eyewitness Visual Dictionary of Physics -Book
• You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Simple Machines! -Book
• Simple Machines : The Way They Work – Physics Books for Kids -Book
• Bridges! Amazing Structures -Book
• Thames & Kosmos Structural Engineering: Bridges & Skyscrapers | Science & Engineering Kit -Kit
• Learning Resources Simple Machines, STEM, Early Engineering -Kit
• Thames & Kosmos Simple Machines Science Experiment & Model Building -Kit

Video Demonstrations for Mechanics

To see the videos and lesson ideas you can purchase the video series here.

How to Make a Hydraulic Lift

See a sneak peak at this hydraulics video. The other tutorials and lessons with them are on the course page.

For our Physics unit for our homeschool we made hydraulic machines using the Pathfinders kit 4 in 1 Hydraulic Kit available at Rainbow Resource. This kit comes with four projects that are well made, come with all the materials you need to make the projects and include additional educational material so you can learn about the machines you are making and the physics principles behind them.

Waldorf Main Lessons for Grade 6 An Introduction to Physics

Physics Lesson 1 | The Formation of the Universe

In our first lesson in the Waldorf curriculum The Introduction of Physics: Heat, Light and Sound by Live Education, we chose to replace the verses provided in the main lesson book and include ones from the Qur’an. Whether you are a Muslim family or not, you are welcome to include these ayat in your main lesson book. While in the past, I only chose one ayat to open this unit with this illustration as a chalk drawing, this time, I opted to add all of them and this became the written content for the lesson. We firstly used Sargent Art Square Chalk Pastels, but I didn’t like the way it looked, so I drew the illustration again in Lyra Colored Pencils. I used a fountain pen and later a black Sharpie to write the ayat.We are using our main lesson books from a Child’s Dream. These measure 9.5″x12.5″ and two page spread is separated by onion skin. I prefer these larger blank notebooks, but by this age, students are using the smaller notebooks with both blank and lined pages. Here is a document that’s ready to print and contains the ayat that we used for this lesson.

Physics Lesson 2 The Sounds of Nature

For our Introduction to Physics, not every lesson has a main lesson book entry from me (the teacher), in some cases, the student is doing a main lesson book entry based on the lesson in which I have not presented written or illustrated work for her to copy or refer to. The lesson before this is one such lesson. On two 2-page spreads, my daughter wrote several columns to write where sounds come from for all the letters in the English and Arabic alphabet. She wrote where the sounds originate and what part of the mouth is used including tongue and teeth. This lesson the Sounds of Nature may come before or after the lesson on the sounds humans make (speaking, singing, or reciting). This lesson is another religiously inspired lesson in which ayat from the Qur’an are used as part of the written work. You may find the complete list of ayat used for this lesson on this document which is ready for printing.

Physics Lesson 3 | The Speed of Sound Through Various Media

In this lesson, we conclude or lessons on an introduction to acoustics with a lesson the speed of sound through various mediums. For many of the lessons we do demonstrations to experience the lesson and not all demonstrations are included in the main lesson book. For this lesson, we drew a tuning fork with ‘sounds waves’ emanating from it. We used this visual to indicate the difference in how sound moves through solids, liquids and gases. We also talked about how sound moves through a vacuum. While these lessons took 2-3 days, we only have one entry in our Main lesson book, through we could have easily filled more. We used Sargent Art Square Chalk Pastels for the illustration and included the onion skin paper as part of the lesson. We did a bit of form drawing along the border of the page which contains the narration.

Physics Lesson 4 | The Introduction of Shadow and Light

In this physics lesson we introduce shadow and light as one of our first lessons in the introduction of optics. The Waldorf approach to these introductory lessons is experiential before analytical. We are observing the role of light in optics and our sight of objects. We began this lesson with a black box (cardboard box painted black on the interior) in which we cut a slit above and a hole on one side for a flashlight and a viewing portal on the side adjacent to the flashlight. We turned on the light and observed the blackness from the viewing portal. This works best if your box is at least 2-3 feet, but more is better so you aren’t able to pivot your head to see the flashlight or the beam of light hitting the back of the box. When viewing properly, you cannot ‘see’ the light through the air of the box. But if you add chalk dust through the slit, the light becomes noticeable as it hits the dust that becomes visible to our eyes.

For this lesson on shadow, we used charcoal to draw trees on both the onion skin page separating the pages of our 9.5″x12.5″ Main lesson book from A Child’s Dream. We played with negative space and left the page mostly white which is a grand contrast from our other illustrations.

Physics Lesson 5 | On Shadow and Light

This physics lesson accompanies our previous lesson on the introduction of light and shadow. For this lesson, we waited until dusk when our space had darkened so we could observe the play of light on various objects. We created a semi dark environment, used a spot light and shown light on a sphere. We observed the elongated oval shadow produced by the spotlight. We observed the bright spot on face if the sphere and then worked on translating that experience into an illustration for the Main lesson book. Next I formed a cone from paper and taped it along one side and trimmed the base so it could sit on the desk. Once again we observed the light and drew the experience. Lastly we took a rectangle block and repeated the process.

For this lesson on shadow, we used charcoal to draw trees on both the onion skin page separating the pages of our 9.5″x12.5″ Main lesson book from A Child’s Dream. We played with negative space and left the page mostly white which is a grand contrast from our other illustrations.

Physics Intro to Color

Now that we’ve completed our lessons on light and shadow, we move into color. For this lesson we explored color in light and color in pigment. If you have a prism, you can see the rainbow emerge when sunlight hits the prism. If you have three flashlights, you can place cyan, magenta and green film over each one and shine them together over one spot and see the secondary colors emerge and excitedly you can see clear or white light emerge when all there lights intersect. When the three primary colors of light cross they make white and when the three primary pigments mix, they make black. While children will have played with mixing paint from a young age, performing this lesson now as middle school aged students, we are looking to experience that phenomenon again, then take it to the next level (with light rather than pigment). If you’re looking for the same thrill of mixing colors to see new colors emerge, try mixing metallic silver and green and see what happens!

For this lesson we used Fabriano hot press 90lb. watercolor paper and Fabriano cold press 90lb. watercolor paper. We used our Stockmar concentrated watercolor paints and diluted them with water until we achieved our desired pigmentation. We used little jars for our paint and broad brushes. We also used tape to keep our paper flat, but it didn’t result in the desired effect of keeping our paper flat to minimize pooling.

How to Make a Color Wheel

We continue our physics lessons on optics and color with a color wheel exercise to help us understand complementary colors on a color wheel as part of our afterimages demonstration and lesson. When doing afterimages, you see the color opposite on the color wheel. We first painted a variety of colors, stared at the color until the rim of the color glowed with the afterimage color. Then we close our eyes and see the afterimage with the complementary color.

Painting the color wheel helped my students understand visually how complementary colors are opposite the color wheel. We used Stockmar watercolor pan paint for this project, but you could do variations with pastels or muted tones. We set the compass at 4 inches for the circle then did six division then 12 division of a circle. We connected the points with a ruler, then readjusted the compass to 3″, 2″ and finally 1″ to make concentric circles. We labeled the outside of the color wheel with the primary and secondary colors.

Variegated Color Afterimages | Shades of Colors & Their Complementary Colors

For this lesson in our Physics main lesson block, we continue to explore color and afterimages. An afterimage is the color you see on the edges of a color (think staring at a yellow dot), or when you close your eyes and you see the object in your closed eyes but it’s a different color. In fact, it’s the complementary color of the color you’re looking at. The complementary colors are the colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. We previous constructed a color wheel and worked with afterimages, but this lesson explores the subtle variations in color in afterimages. You can explore variegated greens or reds, or in our case, we did the 6 primary and secondary colors. To our disappointment, the afterimages were not varied as we hoped. The lines were too close or too thin, or maybe our choice of art medium wasn’t right. I would suggest using markers, watercolors or acrylic paint and using only 3-4 shades within a color if you wish to try this out. I think the results are better with fewer shades that are distinct.