Yup. BTDT and moving on.
Let me give you my "lessons learned". Keep in mind that I was formerly a teacher--so I "get" lesson plans, pacing, objectives tied to standards, etc.
What I truly loved about CK was that it was, to some extent, flexible; and it incorporated the arts. It appeared to just give you a set of objectives and allowed you to figure out how to meet them. And it actually CAN be that.
What I truly DIDN'T love about CK was that it was WAY TOO MUCH to humanly cram into a year and do it in a way that allowed for experiential learning or expanding on topics unless you were schooling year-round, 7 days/week.
At it's foundation/base level, it is nothing more than a set of objectives to be met year-by-year from Preschool through 8th grade. You can get that in the Scope & Sequence (which I think is now free online, but that might not include Preschool).
It builds from there, though. There are plenty of online lesson plans free of charge to help you meet those objectives. There's the day-by-day planner if you need help with pacing. There's a Teacher's Guide (TG) to help YOU as a teacher understand the heart of what you're trying to convey to the student. The TG is actually really great in helping you identify the crux of the topic so you can find teachable moments.
There's also the "What Your X Grader Needs to Know" (usually abbreviated "WYxGNTK") series--which is a compliment to the CK objectives for that grade's year. For us, it was more like "CK lite" because it was a lot of great stuff without being the same, overwhelming amount of info in the actual Scope & Sequence. It's meant to compliment public schooling and provide "fill in" if these things aren't covered. So it's like "if not the whole curriculum, they at LEAST need to know THIS".
There are other resources you can find (at a cost) to help with CK. CK doesn't do a math curriculum but recommend Saxon (which we did/do) or Singapore (which didn't work for us). They also don't do a Social Studies curriculum and farm that out to Pearson (whose K books used to be really expensive with the rest of the grades reasonable--but they've mimicked the K extra large, color books in at least 1st grade now, too--so it's very expensive). As I understand, they've built a reading curriculum through CK now but I don't know if it's included in the TG's.
They also have the book "Books to Build on" which is a set of reading lists to compliment the subject matter taught in each grade so that you can supply stories that reinforce the subject matter you're teaching.
Are you getting that it gets pretty involved?
We have CK's "What Your x Grader Needs to Know" series. We also have the "Making the Grade: Everything Your X Grader Needs to Know" series (completely different). The Making the Grade series is slightly similar to the CK series, but differs in that it's more like a semi-scripted curriculum in a book written for parents who want to be sure their children hit the major milestones per grade. So they're telling you what to discuss with your child and what they should respond with, plus ideas for expanding as well as a very brief idea of what you're teaching and why. I think these two plus a Scope and Sequence could get you all the way through 8th grade. Seriously.
I bought the day-by-day planner, scope & sequence, TG for K, "WYxGNTK" for Preschool through 2nd grade, Saxon math and Pearson's Soc Studies for CK. When I tried to do my lesson pacing, I couldn't wrap my head around how on earth school districts were actually accomplishing it all. Keep in mind that when you're teaching more than 10-ish kids, you can't get nearly as much of a lesson done as when you're teaching 1-2 kids. I was teaching one kid. With experience in lesson planning (or at least objective-for-the-day planning since I taught electives and could get through a marking period that way if I knew the content well). CK was just a LOT, LOT, LOT of stuff. There was no possible way I could cover all the content let alone do it more hands on than in a classroom without it being a LOT of work on my part (and even then, I'm not sure it would've happened). So I ditched it and realized that this was partially why my kid wouldn't be going to school--so that he wouldn't just have things thrown at him for the sake of checking it off vs. actually learning about it well enough for it to matter. And to that end, when I really looked at what of the curriculum was really critical, I wasn't really sure how relevant some of the it was to learning anyway.
I still use the CK Scope and Sequence to check off what my son has actually mastered.
I secretly panic that something will happen to me and he'll land in a classroom.
Oh, and at one point, a national curriculum was being considered so that all kids in all states were learning the same thing (CA and TX do this by the state). CK was a contender to be the national curriculum. I believe they tie all their objectives to the national standards, but most states have their own core curriculum standards that they follow as opposed to the national standards.
