Big History Project Planning

I am a list maker, a box-checker, and a loose planner. When I first started homeschooling, I planned out the whole year by day and by week 2 we were already off and I was reshuffling. Never again. 

Now I make huge lists that include everything that relates to our topic and then I can check it off as we go. This gives us the ability to go down some rabbit holes when something grabs their interest, yet still see the finish line at the end of the year.

Big History Project has done everything for you. They provide ready-made lesson plans, blank lesson plan forms, schedules for a full year and for one semester, how to give high school credit for world history and/or science, and a lot more resources along with a forum for questions. They have an online classroom setup to add your kids and they have access to their lesson plan.  Quizzes are optional and only 5 questions. I like to use them as review to make sure my younger, not quite as science-oriented 11 year old is keeping up with my 12 year old who is eating up every BHP crumb. 

My lists are my way of keeping track, but they are not necessary since BHP provides everything you need. I knew we would be skipping and reformatting some things to make this high school level program work for my middle school aged students as well as scale things down from a classroom full of kids to 2.

I included in my lists a table that has every activity BHP planned by unit and section. I wanted to be able to see at a glance where we are because we actually aren't doing much on the website. We're using YouTube to watch the BHP playlist videos on the tv. I'm printing out the reading material so we can highlight the key information and vocabulary. 

So prepare yourselves for big lists. I don't expect to do everything on them, but at the end of the year I'll have a good idea of what was covered along with my version of lesson plans. My state does not require any documentation, but it is nice to have just in case.

Big History Project - Google Docs
Media List
A list of all of the related books, movies, documentaries, podcasts we might want to watch.

Unit Plans
Unit 1: What is Big History?
Unit 2: Big Bang
Unit 3: Stars and Elements
Unit 4: Our Solar System and Earth
Unit 5: Life
Unit 6: Early Humans
Unit 7: Agriculture & Civilization
Unit 8: Expansion & Interconnections
Unit 9: Acceleration
Unit 10: The Future