Cottage Press - Book of Centuries

[aharrington]

Is anyone using this and able to offer a review or pictures? 

[kentuckymom]

I haven't used this, but I purchased it for the upcoming school year, and I'm impressed by the layout. Mind you, this is our first year homeschooling and I have nothing to compare it to.

 

I don't have an easy way to show you pictures, but I'll give you perhaps a more thorough description than the one on the website.

 

First of all, the book is fairly large, with 8 1/2 x 11 pages and plenty of space to write. The paper is good quality and seems unlikely to tear with normal use. Each two page spread has an area in the middle with college ruled notebook lines and an area at each edge that is left blank.  Your child could draw pictures of historical events, you could paste timeline figures, or you could write or draw something I haven't thought of. About half of each page is lined and half blank.

 

The first two page spread reads  "In the Beginning", followed by "Men Began to Multiply" and "A flood of water." Dates begin on the next spread at 5000 B.C. I like this format as an old earth creationist because I can have my son put in dates about the age of the universe and the earth from mainstream science while still focusing on God who created the earth. I think a young earth creationist might like it even more.

 

The first page with dates has 5000 BC on one side and 2500 BC on the other. The following page goes from 2500 to 2200 BC. After that point a pattern begins of two page spreads for every 100 years - 2200 BC to 2100 BC and so on. The AD section begins with a spread "In the fullness of time," which is meant to focus on the birth of Jesus. Then it starts with 1 AD and continues the 100 year pattern. This continues until the year 1500, at which point two page spreads begin to cover every 50 years (1500 to 1550 and so on). At 1800 the count slows down even more and every two page spread covers 20 years. Starting at 1900 every two page spread covers 10 years. The dates go up to 2030, and then there are pages in the back labeled "maps and notes."

 

As I said, I haven't used it, but I was very favorably impressed with the way it looks and anticipate it being a useful tool. FWIW, I also purchased the Fable and Song LA program from Cottage Press and am very impressed. Time will tell if they work well for us, but they're definitely of good quality.

[aharrington]

Kentuckymom, thanks for the description.  There is a lot about this that is appealing.  Think I would have it rebound as a spiral.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

Thanks for the review! This was on my list as well. I actually completely forgot to order it when I ordered everything else a couple of weeks ago and this post reminded me.