Overwhelmed with planning

Ok.  I think I’ve bit off more than I can chew.  We’re long time homeschoolers but I’ve always used a prepackaged curricula and tweaked it to death.  🙂  This year, as there isn’t anything available to do what I want to do, I’m trying to do my own thing.  I’ve been working on it for months and I just don’t think it’s going to work.  

I have a 5 year old and a 9 year old (today is his birthday).  I would like to do an overview of American History using Mara Pratt’s books.  They only go through the Civil War.  Also, they seem to be missing Lewis and Clark, Alamo, etc events.  I really don’t know what to do for those time periods.

But, my biggest problem is: I think I’m scheduling more than we can do.  For example, I figured out that we have to read 10 pages a day of the Pratt books to get through the Civil War by week 18 (so that we can cover 1870-current the second half of the year).  Then, I have scheduled a Read a loud, a reader for my 9 year old, and books like What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin, and The Pilgrims of Plimoth, D’Aulaire’s books etc that I don’t know what to do with.  I just get lost in it all and don’t know what to do.

This doesn’t even include science books, character, poems, artist and composer studies, and Bible study…  Help!  How do you schedule it all?

Currently my son is doing 1 page of Practical Arithmetic and 1 lesson of English for the Thoughtful Child book 1 and it’s taking him about 2 hours.  He has a hard time keeping his mind on things unless I sit there with him.  I can’t sit there with him when I have other children to attend to.  (I have an older child too.)  I really need help.