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



Unit 10: The Future, Robotics, Engineering, Environmental Science

My Educational Entertainment Pinterest Board has links to many of my favorite Netflix, YouTube, Prime and any other site I may come across that has educational shows I might want to use for homeschooling.

TEDTalks are a semi-annual lecture series where the goal is to give the talk of your life in 18 minutes or less. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, but the talks have grown so popular, they have branched out into many more topics. TEDTalks began in 1984, as a way to bring together the best ideas and people and share.

http://ed.ted.com/ - Education Section - TedEd is family friendly. Most videos have a Quick Quiz, a Think section that gives some related open-ended questions and a Dig Deeper section that gives additional resources.


Education
Sir Ken Robinson: Schools Kill Creativity 
Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms - A very well done animated version of his Schools Kill Creativity talk
Geoff Mulgan: A Short Intro to the Studio School 
Daniel Pink: The Puzzle of Motivaton - this video is about business, but I think it translates really well to homeschooling. 
Lisa Bu: How Books Can Open Your Mind - The magic of books- just added!


Online Learning
Salman Khan: Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education - Khan Academy Founder
Daphne Koller: What We're Learning From Online Education - Coursera and Online Education
Peter Norvig: The 100,000 Student Classroom - Stanford Online
Sugata Mitra: The Child-Driven Education - just added!

Special Consideration
Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts - If you have an introvert, this is a great one to watch.
Arthur Benjamin Does "Mathemagic" - Watch with the kids
Dan Meyer: Math Class Needs a Makeover
Meena Boppana - Top Ten Reasons I Love Math
TedEd: How Folding Paper Can Get You to the Moon

Science
AnnMarie Thomas: Hands-on Science with Squishy Circuits - Fun project for little kids
E.O. Wilson: Advice to Young Scientists
Ted-Ed: Just How Small is an Atom? - Animated
Ted-Ed: How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries - Adam Savage from 'Mythbusters'
Tyler DeWitt: Hey Science Teachers - make it fun
Ted-Ed: Questions No One Knows the Answers To - Animated
David Christian: The History of our World in 18 Minutes
Award-Winning Teenage Science in Action - Google Science Fair Winners
Ben Goldacre: Battling Bad Science - Parent's view first - mild language
Ramsey Musallam: 3 Rules to Spark Learning- just added!

Health
Marco Tempest: The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla - One of my favorites!
    - The making of "Nikola Tesla"
Mitch Resnick: Let's Teach Kids to Code - just added!

Music