Secular History... no, really. Seriously.

The Spawn has just started preschool which I have been planning since before I was pregnant. I'm not kidding. And since I know exactly how picky I am about things like, I don't know, facts with a healthy side of secular worldview, I knew that world history would be a tricky thing to prep. So I started early. Kindergarten will be devoted to prehistory/intro to geography and I'm piecing that together but 1st-4th grades we'll be on a Classical cycle:

1st grade: Ancient History
2nd grade: The Middle Ages
3rd grade: Early Modern Times
4th grade: Modern Age

Then we'll repeat the cycle in increasing depth twice more in 5th-8th and 9th-12th, with summer units to reinforce prehistory, geography, and the Cosmos.

I really, really, REALLY love the idea of a timeline. Specifically a timeline song. And I've done my research. A few years ago I began the search for the holy grail of timeline songs. And, as expected, all of the timeline songs that I found had something in common with the holy grail. They were either super-duper religious or totally non-existent. Warning: Python tangent ahead.

Ahem, as I was saying.

As I don't have a full orchestra in my homeschool materials closet (surprising, I know!) I've decided that writing, orchestrating, recording, and mixing my own timeline song is not a project that I wish to undertake.

Enter: Classical Conversations.

For those of you unfamiliar, Classical Conversations (CC) is a Christian company with classical homeschool materials and co-op programs. They also have a timeline song. And I bought it. Their timeline song is meant to go along with the CC Classical Acts and Facts cards. It also has a sign language component which is right up our alley.

Unfortunately, CC is decidedly un-secular. The timeline song begins with creation, goes through the fall of man, the flood, etc. This is totally expected from a Christian-based company. But it also includes motherfucking Billy Graham's birth as an event deserving of inclusion in a timeline of the Events of World History.

Picard does not approve of this fuckery.

I'm planning to replace these moronic additions with things like "3500 BCE" instead of "creation" and "Einstein's Theory of Relativity" in place of "Motherfucking Billy Graham". That last one might not be a direct quote from their version.

So I'm geeking out over my version of the timeline song. And I'm trying to work lesson plans with the usable narratives from SOTW and a whole bunch of secular reference materials: Usborne IL Encyclopedia of World History, Oxford Children's History of the World, A History of World Societies, The Humanistic Tradition, The Earth and Its Peoples, and A Little History of the World. Any suggestions for other reference materials that won't make me want to remove my eyeballs with a red-hot cocktail fork? Thanks in advance.