Fairy Tale Physics

(Ages 10-12)

Learn physics through fairy tales!

  • Read in any order

  • Each book includes practice problems and activities

  • Written by an educator with 20 years of experience and degrees in physics and cognitive psychology

  • Newton’s Laws: A Fairy Tale follows the story of Kip, the youngest of three sons who is gifted only a single apple with which to go into the world and make his fortune.

    He encounters a mathematical wizard named Newton, whose arch-rival Leibnitz is attempting to take over the kingdom. Together they journey to the capital to stop him, discovering Newton’s three laws of motion along the way.

    I wrote this book to help students build an intuitive foundation that corrects the most common misconceptions. (The biggest one is that objects require force to move – my free body diagram worksheet focuses on this, too.)

    Concepts Introduced

    • Newton’s Three Laws

    • Free body diagrams

    • Forces, Net Force, and Apparent Weight

    Content

    • Designed for Ages 10 - 12

    • 83 pages

    • Explanations of the physics behind the story

    • Links to simulations and videos to learn more

    • Practice problems and hands-on activities

  • Queen Elise never knew about the bargain her father made in order to become king. Not until after his death did she learn that he did not fulfill his end of that bargain, and now the kingdom and everything Elise loves is in jeopardy.

    Elise, however, is determined to set things right, and she sets off on a quest to save her kingdom.

    Concepts Introduced:

    • Buoyancy

    • Flow Rate

    • Archimedes’ Principle

    • Pressure

    • Bernoulli’s Law

    Content

    • For Ages 10 - 12

    • 48 pages

    • Suggested Activities, Videos, and Phet Simulations

  • Prince John has recently been crowned king. He wants to be a good king, however he has spent most of his life reading about slaying dragons and rescuing princesses, and feels an enormous amount of pressure from the fourteen portraits of his illustrious forebears staring down at him from the walls of the throne room.

    Luckily, a mysterious witch appears with a magical candle that might be the answer to all John’s problems…

    In the candle are the ghosts of the most powerful light mages: Einstein, Snell, deBroglie, and Young. And together these famous physicists teach him about light and color, so that he can bring illumination to his kingdom.

    Concepts Introduced

    • The speed of light

    • The wave nature of light

    • Wavelength

    • Frequency

    • Speed

    • Color

    • Reflection

    • Refraction

    • Snell’s Law

    • Diffraction

    • The double slit experiment

    • The deBroglie equation

    • Electromagnetic waves

    • The visual spectrum

      Content

    • Ages 10 - 12

    • 68 Pages

    • 8 Conceptual Questions + Answers

    • Suggested Accompanying YouTube videos and Phet Simulations

  • When Worry was born, her fairy godmother disappeared, leaving her unable to use magic in a castle filled with it. Her sister Hope, however, has a fairy godmother and is taken under the wing of the last Scholar Knight. But when Hope is captured by a dragon, Worry is determined to rescue her and uncover the long-lost secrets of the Scholar Knights, with only her scientific curiosity and a sea-fact-loving ghost cat named Kepler to guide her.

    Concepts Introduced

    • Tides

    • Circles and Ellipses

    • Logic and Syllogisms

    • Gravitational Force

    • Freefall

    • Orbits

    • The history of our understanding of gravity, from Aristotle through Einstein

      Content

    • Ages 10 - 12

    • 206 Pages

    • Writing Prompts

    • Hands-on Experiments Related to the Story

    • Discussion Questions

    • Suggested Accompanying YouTube videos and Phet Simulations

What people are saying:

  • “The books are extremely well-written, with complex and quirky characters that will catch children’s interest.”

    -The Homeschool Scientist review of the Fairy Tale Physics Series

  • "An absolutely brilliant game! Really fun to play, very captivating storyline - and the fact that my daughter learned (and retained) so much about electricity and circuits was amazing to me! I was very impressed with the graphics too. Overall, a wonderful idea fantastically executed!"

    - Parent Review of The Sorceress of Circuits

  • "Loved it!. . . Sarah Allen’s book Physics Fables, presents very complex concepts at a level that is fun and interactive for readers of all ages, and provides thoughtful information in a charming and captivating manner."

    - Reedsy Discovery Review of Physics Fables

  • "I LOVE IT"

    - Elim, Age 12 Review of The Sorceress of Circuits

Physics Fables (Ages 8 - 10)

Quick conceptual introductions to some of the most fascinating ideas in physics! These are short stories that each introduce a single topic, explain it through a story, and then give fun hands-on activities or discussion questions. Great for introducing a topic in an engaging way.

Integrated Activities

Each story is paired with hands-on activities that bring the physics concepts to life:

  • Use density to send a mermaid a message in a bottle!

  • Observe polarized light like butterflies navigating the sky!

  • Race with friends to experience the strangeness of Special Relativity.

Included Stories

  • The Tortoise, the Hare, and the Photon: A Tale of Special Relativity

  • Sakura and the Many-Layered Sea: A Tale of Density

  • Clemmm and the Polar Coordinates

  • The Emperor Butterfly’s New Clothes: Animal Perception Science

  • The Wayfarer’s Scepter: An Adventure in Magnetism


Build a strong foundation in science and a lifelong love for learning with Physics Fables.

a picture of a smiling friendly girl inventor

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Adventure Workbooks!

(Ages 8+)

The best way to learn is through doing. In this series, I’m taking some abstract physics or math (or both!) concepts, creating a story that involves those concepts, and then crafting a series of fun, hands-on activities to go along with the story. For each of these activities, you can download the PDF version for free, and the story that goes along with it, or you can buy a printed spiral notebook version (I print through Lulu rather than Amazon specifically because I love spiral notebooks so much. Much easier to write in.)

an illustration of a spaceship in space

Starlight Starship: An Interstellar Voyage of 3-D Shapes and the Inverse Square Law

More Soon!

I hope to make more of these soon - if you tried out the Starlight Starship Adventure, I’d love to hear what you thought!

Non-Fiction

(Ages 14+)

I have a couple of non-fiction series on Amazon. My algebra series is a set of basic workbooks focused on building foundational skills. They’re especially focused on the small details I see most students have difficulty with. Electric Circuits is part of the Stick Figure Physics series, which is a series of short (math-filled) eBooks that explain physics topics with stick figures.

book cover of Algebra 1 by Sarah Allen
book cover of Electric Circuits by Sarah Allen
book cover of the complete stick figure physics tutorials by sarah allen

Math Notebooks

One thing I do with most of my students is coach them on how to take notes. Notes aren’t just a way to record information for later use; they’re a tool for processing information.

The note-taking process I teach involves writing down the major ideas and equations, while focusing on the lecture, thinking about the concepts. That way you record the most important information, but you’re thinking about and engaging with the content, rather than just copying what’s written on the board.

For all my students, I want math to be an enjoyable experience. Part of that is picking a notebook that they love writing in. Especially for students with ADHD, having really detailed notes that they can refer back to can be really empowering.

I know there are tons of beautiful notebooks out there, but I wasn’t finding any that had all the features I wanted, so I worked with a graphic designer to create these. I wanted them to be really beautiful in addition to encouraging good note-taking.

Here’s what makes them different than the typical spiral:

  • Numbered Pages

  • Table of Contents

  • Lined Paper and Graph Paper on Every Page

  • Space for Important Equations

  • Space for Questions

the book cover of the math notebook. It reads 'Math Notes'