Earth time line (possibly GUSy for some people - involves deep time / old earth)

[IsabelC]

Please can you help? I am wallowing in the slough of indecision.

 

We have started our Official Home School Timeline. I love the idea, the kids love the idea, our home ed authority person will undoubtedly love it when she next visits, so it's win-win-win.

 

But, I can't decide what needs to go on it. We're currently filling in the period from 5000mya through to earliest recorded history. From the Cambrian onwards, I'll split it along the conventional lines. Then from first civilizations onward it will be plain sailing because we'll roughly follow SOTW's progression.

 

So I'm just thinking about the precambrian. But what are the most crucial things for the kids to learn, and how much detail should I include. Obviously I'm not doing it on the same scale as I will later on (because that would take up the whole house and then all of human history will wind up in a corner behind the washing machine or something!), so I thought I'd just have a page for each major milestone, eg atmosphere forms, oceans, first life.

 

Would anyone who has done this care to share your list of what should be included please? (This is for a 7yo and a 5yo on their first history go round.)

Edited October 1, 2010 by Hotdrink

[Kay in Cal]

I liked the pre-history timeline in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. It's been a couple years since I looked at it, but it was sort of a spiral with scientific ages and animal development. I remember my son really enjoying it a lot... and the spiral design would enable longer time on shorter paper.

[Wheres Toto]

Charlie's Playhouse has a really nice timeline that I plan to get when we hit that point.

 

I also found this site that has a very cool video timeline tour that goes over the highlights and may provide some key information to include. The mass extinctions would probably be a good place to start, then adding in the appearance of some of the major classifications of life (jawless fish, chordates, tetrapods, dinosaurs, etc.)

[mammaofbean]

i have no suggestions, but would love to see what you come up with. i continue to procrastinate on our timeline.

[Mallory]

The big advantage to actually using a time line as opposed to books or charts is to see the distances between things. So I don't know that calling it a time line, unless there is some way you are visualizing the spread of time really matters. Instead it will just be posters that might be in chronological order, but aren't really a time line.

 

We have a timeline that covers one wall with current to 4000yo then around the corner on the next wall is 4000 to 5000yo. When we did prehistory we stood in that corner and looked down one wall to visualize the spread from the earliest civiliztions and writing and farming to where our birthdays are way down at the other corner.

 

The we looked down the other wall (happens to be looking east) and I said life started way that way right? Past our yard, past the pond we walk to over that hill, in fact, by the scale of our timeline it is about 1500 miles that way, past all of AR, past TN, past NC, and out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We stared off into the distance for a while. ;)

 

Then I said the earth formed much farther that way. About 10 times farther. Past all of Europe and Asia and most of the Pacific Ocean nearly back to California. We traced it around on the globe a few times.

 

As we got to the different periods we would go back to our corner and talk about how far thing were again. We didn't put any of it on a timeline, and my boys really took off on the prehistory info (read lots of books, movies, play, etc.) so I didn't put much into it beyond reading the prehistory part of The Usborne book.

 

Your kids are so little and there isn't much exciting happening in the precambrian. The challenge is to find someway to get the span of time into something they can understand. Which is hard to do with out something with a lot of blank space.

 

As for what to put, it depends on why you are studing prehistory. Is it to lead up to history? For science? Biology? or Geology? So much of the precambrian "stuff" is geology. But we were mostly interested in life so we didn't talk about precambrian time much.

 

I don't know if I really answered your question, but hopefully my rambling helped someone.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/index.htm

[Gwenhwyfar]

 

I also found this site that has a very cool video timeline tour that goes over the highlights and may provide some key information to include. The mass extinctions would probably be a good place to start, then adding in the appearance of some of the major classifications of life (jawless fish, chordates, tetrapods, dinosaurs, etc.)

 

oh hey neat! *bookmarked* :D

[Satori]

To get a perspective on things, we made a timeline along our staircase to see how very long things took to come about.

http://satorismiles.com/2009/05/11/universe-wall-timeline/

 

Then we made a timeline of just precambrian to present, just to visualize things, this helped even me a lot.

http://satorismiles.com/2009/06/15/prehistory-timelines/

 

Even though my daughter was only four, she has a very keen interest on some of this stuff, so we went into depth into each period. She probably knows more than me now. I started making prehistory lessons, but I don't have time to finish them, but you may check them out on my site.

[Sahamamama]

As for what to put, it depends on why you are studing prehistory. Is it to lead up to history? For science? Biology? or Geology? So much of the precambrian "stuff" is geology. But we were mostly interested in life so we didn't talk about precambrian time much.

 

I don't know if I really answered your question, but hopefully my rambling helped someone.

 

Yes, I found this question helpful (for planning out our future studies).

[Gwenhwyfar]

To get a perspective on things, we made a timeline along our staircase to see how very long things took to come about.

http://satorismiles.com/2009/05/11/universe-wall-timeline/

 

Then we made a timeline of just precambrian to present, just to visualize things, this helped even me a lot.

http://satorismiles.com/2009/06/15/prehistory-timelines/

 

Even though my daughter was only four, she has a very keen interest on some of this stuff, so we went into depth into each period. She probably knows more than me now. I started making prehistory lessons, but I don't have time to finish them, but you may check them out on my site.

 

these are great ~ but i also have to say.. i LOVE your stair railing! :D

[EmilyK]

This is a little OT, but the exhibit Evolving Planet at the Field Museum and the accompanying book (which we read and loved beforehand, by coincidence) was great for prehistoric time progression. In case anyone is close enough to see it!

[Rosie_0801]

You've seen the Charlie's Playhouse timeline?

 

Rosie

[IsabelC]

I liked the pre-history timeline in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.

We have got the Usborne Book of World History and SOTW, both of which don't go back further than 10 years. To add to that, we have DK Eyewitness volumes Prehistoric Life and Early Humans, but neither of those has a really good summary. Possibly I should have got the Kingfisher instead. Luckily, I have just seen that our library has it, so I've put it on hold.

 

Charlie's Playhouse has a really nice timeline that I plan to get when we hit that point.

Looks great, but it's AU$45.50, and in any case I want to make our own as I'm using the paper to add it on to the Add A Century kit we already have.

 

I also found this site that has a very cool video timeline tour that goes over the highlights and may provide some key information to include. The mass extinctions would probably be a good place to start, then adding in the appearance of some of the major classifications of life (jawless fish, chordates, tetrapods, dinosaurs, etc.)

Thanks, I have bookmarked it.

 

The big advantage to actually using a time line as opposed to books or charts is to see the distances between things. So I don't know that calling it a time line, unless there is some way you are visualizing the spread of time really matters. Instead it will just be posters that might be in chronological order, but aren't really a time line.

You are probably right! I guess I'm making a timeline for the most recent part of history and a series of chronological snapshot summaries to go at the beginning of it. But what we're going to do to give them a perspective on the relative time is the toilet paper timeline. So this one doesn't have to fulfil that function.

 

As for what to put, it depends on why you are studing prehistory. Is it to lead up to history? For science? Biology? or Geology? So much of the precambrian "stuff" is geology. But we were mostly interested in life so we didn't talk about precambrian time much.

Good question. I'm hoping that this will provide a bit of background for sciences as well as for history. (But I guess it's also tied in with our whole worldview of humans as a small part of something much larger - I just can't imagine beginning history with the advent of our species when we've only been around for such a tiny fraction of time.)

 

http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/index.htm

Wow, that site has heaps of stuff. Too in depth for my kids at this stage, but perfect for me to learn/revise things.