I don't buy very much that is already planned, and when I do I tend to tweak it a lot. So it takes me quite a bit of planning. Which, honestly, I love! I would love to be a professional curriculum designer after I am done raising and teaching my own. :)

I am using Usborne's World Religion book and World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored & Explained(http://www.amazon.com/World-Religions-Faiths-Explored-Explained/dp/0756617723/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340559372&sr=1-1&keywords=world+religions) My Very Formal Plan is to add in a short study of each religion as we hit it's origin in history.

We tried this for 8th grade and it went in reverse. By the end of the year I was doing all the planning alone and giving him a daily task list. We'll try again in 9th. I'm sure he'll pick it up eventually! :)

I am just now getting excited about the upcoming year and really getting into planning. Up until the last few days I have been despairing of finding anything I felt really good about, so I am glad to be excited finally. I still need to finalize the history schedule (including scheduling readings on the science, music, and art of each time period), generate a world literature schedule to go along with history, choose readings from across all curriculum for IEW, write a schedule for philosophy, and revamp the Quarks and Quirks Biology to work for a co-op of mixed believers on the sticky evolution topic. And then order the last few books, and all the biology supplies, and and and and and... all the little details that I haven't thought of yet. Oh, and we need to finish that last bit of 8th grade. Eek!

My son had a bad experience with Latin several years ago so now is very resistant to learning it as a spoken language. So, since I still want him to have the advantages of having some grounding in Latin, he has agreed to make Greek and Latin root flashcards and practice them. We will use this book: http://www.amazon.com/English-Roots-Up-Vol-Spelling/dp/0964321033 If it goes well, we'll use the next one next year. The books say they are 2nd-12th grade so I would think they would work for any level learner. :)

Do you use the broad lessons and the more narrow lessons, and do you find they overlap too much? Thanks! :)

Link for anyone interested: http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/ We are planning on using this for a big part of a two-year world history course starting this fall. I am wondering if anyone else has used it, and if so, how? Did you use all the panorama, landscape, and close up units? How did you handle the close up units that cross Big Eras? Any specific issues you ran into? I am planning to use them all (assuming we like them) and move from the broad units to the more specific units for each time period. I am also supplementing with Mapping the World with Art and various books other resources to have a really full world history curriculum. Any thoughts or ideas as we move forward with this? Thanks!

I actually really enjoy building my own curriculum. What I am afraid of is that I am not particularly well-versed in history, and so I lack the perspective and knowledge needed to spot ideological revisions, and to make connections across various bits of history. Maybe if I just start with a core book that I know I agree with ideologically (something like Zinn's People's History, but for world history) I could use that to guide me. Thanks!

Does that even exist? I love the idea of Tapestry of Grace, but as people who aren't religious and lean pretty hard left, this is not a great fit. I would like to find something as broad and comprehensive as Tapestry, but without the conservative religious worldview. I have been hunting for months and have not found anything. I've read a ton of threads here, but have not found that one thing that is just perfect. Any ideas? Thanks! :)