Grades 4-6 Module 4: Light, Sound, Energy, and Electricity

About Course

Available from January 15, 2027:

Module 4: Light, Sound, Energy, and Electricity

What is energy, and how does it change from one form to another? How do light, sound, electricity, magnetism, and our senses help us understand the world?

In this five-week science module, students investigate energy transformations, conservation, and efficiency. They explore how light travels, reflects, bends, and produces colour; how vibrations create sound; and how electrical charges and circuits work. The module concludes with magnetism, the human senses, unusual senses found in other animals, and the scientific instruments that extend what people can detect.

The emphasis is not on memorizing definitions. Students learn to observe carefully, test ideas with evidence, explain what they see, and recognize when more than one process may be involved.

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for homeschool students in Grades 4-6.

No previous science course is required. Core explanations are accessible to younger students, while optional Going Further readings and research questions give older or more advanced learners additional depth.

How the course works

The module contains 15 classes which can be taken at any pace; three classes per week yield a well paced five week course.

Each class includes:

a short instructor video;
a complete handout with structured reading-and-work lesson;
questions and journal activities;
a clear Words to Know glossary;
an optional Going Further reading;
opportunities to practise observation, measurement, explanation, and fair testing.

Most classes take approximately 30-35 minutes. Students complete hands-on experiments and investigation each week, using commonly accessible materials (no special science kits are required).

Founding Family pricing:

The discounted rate applies for registrations within 2 weeks of the enrolment opening date.

Certificates

Every student who completes the module receives a certificate of completion.

Students who complete this module together with any two additional Stream 1 science modules will also receive a certificate recognizing the completion of a full academic year of science study.

Course Content

Energy: Forms and Transformations
The forms energy takes, and the difference between energy that is stored and energy that is on the move. Chains of transformation, and why a little energy always escapes as heat. The law of conservation of energy, efficiency, and where household electricity actually comes from.

Class 1

Light: How It Travels, Bends, and Splits
Light travelling in straight lines, what different materials do to it, and how a camera works with no lens at all. Reflection and the rule it obeys, refraction at a boundary, and lenses put to work in everyday instruments. Why an object appears coloured, the two different kinds of colour mixing, and what the eye itself contributes.

Sound: Vibration, Pitch, and Hearing
Finding the vibration behind every sound, what actually travels through the air, and the evidence that sound needs matter. Pitch as how fast a source vibrates and loudness as how large the vibration is, with the range of human hearing. The speed of sound, counting the distance to a storm, echoes, and how the ear is built to detect it all.

Electricity: Charge, Circuits, and Power
Two kinds of static charge, why rubbing moves charge rather than creating it, and lightning as the largest spark there is. Complete circuits, conductors and insulators, series and parallel wiring, and drawing a circuit diagram properly. How electricity is generated and delivered to the home, what appliances do with it, and living safely with it.

Magnetism, and the Senses That Detect
Magnetic poles, magnetic fields made visible, and the Earth as a magnet that steers a compass. Sight, hearing and balance, touch, taste, and smell, treated as instruments each with a job and a limit. The senses other animals have and we lack — heat detection, electric sense, and magnetic navigation — and the instruments that extend our own.

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