I must be the most neurotic homeschooling Mom ever, truly...I can't even believe I'm already making more changes to our curriculum, a mere 4 weeks (?) into this. Here's my problem though. As I'd mentioned Friday, we're missing a number of our Winter Promise books (they're on back order). Namely, "Usborne Encyclopedia of World History," "Oxford First Ancient History," "Classical Kids" and "Ancient Science." Now, the last two aren't super-critical right now, but the first two are since they're needed nearly every day. And frankly, "The Mystery of History" does not go into nearly enough detail for my kids - not by itself anyway. To have important subjects covered in a mere paragraph or two trivializes them in a way that does not work for us. Also, I dislike the way the book weaves religion into every lesson, often inappropriately (in my opinion). I love history, my kids love history (The History Channel is on daily in our house), the book is an insult to our intelligence, period. But wow, enough of that rant!

I really hate to criticize the total curriculum package when I haven't even seen it in it's entirety, but apparently I'm far from the first customer to face back-ordered books and it presents a huge problem when trying to actually use the curriculum. I can say there are many things that I like about the curriculum, but not quite enough to continue using it [exclusively] at this point. I had thought that adding "The Story of the World" would help, but it's also pretty basic. Maybe I'm being too demanding?!?

In all fairness, I'm probably far less patient than usual right now... My neck is still sore from surgery, I'm finding work utterly exhausting on top of homeschooling (not to mention housework, cooking meals, doing laundry, etc.) and I seem to have virtually no drive these days...The end result is that I simply don't have the time or energy to be constantly tweaking our curriculum, though I am 100% committed to homeschooling and only want to provide the best possible education for my kids. I really, really want to find a curriculum that we love and can stick with...that would make life SO much easier.

So, what to do?!? Last night I did the only thing I could think of - I ordered more curriculum. This time from Sonlight, which was really my only remaining option. While I had once considered My Father's World, I suspect it, too, would be lighter than I'd like, and Tapestry of Grace wouldn't really work either. Sonlight is a company I've considered off and on for quite awhile, without ever having given them serious thought. For one thing, their cores aren't exactly aligned with how I'd planned to study history and I'm not willing to back up and start with American history at this point. Also, my boys don't really like reading - though they will occasionally crack open a non-fiction book, if it pertains to history or science. Nevertheless, I decided to order anyway, in the hopes of maybe finding something that we'll love.

After some debate, I selected Core 6 (World History I) which aligns with our studies and has the added benefit of being "challenging." I think challenging will be a good thing for us. I don't like that it rushes through Ancient history, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance all in one year, but I'm hoping to stretch it out an extra year by adding in some extra books. Medieval and Renaissance history is my absolute favorite, so I'm not willing to breeze right through it. My fingers are seriously crossed that we can make this work!