Oh Don't be! The first book I read on the subject was "The Well Trained Mind" and THAT was intimidating! But we use some ideas from it, especially their reading lists and suggested curricula for Grammar, Spelling, Vocabulary and Writing, etc.
Our kids are both going to use a different Classical curricula called TRISMS. I like it because it is all laid out for us and the kids do the research, etc. We don't have to re-invent the wheel. The younger one(7th gr.) will do a World History sequence in a year and a half. It is called "History Makers", and it will concentrate on the study of History by looking at Scientists, Explorers and Inventors. Our daughter(9th gr.) will begin the high school sequence with "Discovering the Ancient World" and will study all kinds of civilations like the Sumerians, Babylonians, Ancient Japan and China, and the usual Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Both programs employ the use of historical fiction in the reading program to bolster what is being learned from the research into the period. You can check it out at www.trisms.com. The instructions for making the link are no longer on the post wimdow, so I don't remember how to do it!
But if your kids are young, the main thing is to just expose them to lots of stuff! As I said, "The Well Trained Mind" is intimidating, but you don't HAVE to do all of that for your kids to be well educated. In fact, they said it is likely that not everyone would do it all and that's ok! See if you can get the book from your library. The authors are Jesse Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It is a wonderful sequence for putting everything in its proper historical perspective.
I think you are right. We tried to do everything Jesse Wise suggested.
Now we are using A-Beka videos for my 7th grade daughter and regular curriculum for our 3rd grader and kindegardner.