Length of your timeline?

[Pam B]

I'm curious to the length of everyone's timeline. What seems to be the ideal space between each century for you? How is it working for you? Did you start and then have to add?

 

I am set on starting one this year! I know everyone has their own ways of doing things and timelines can be done a zillion different ways, however, for all you wall timeline keepers- :D any thoughts? Ideas? Input of any kind?

 

:bigear:

[prairie rose]

We had one that was about 20 feet long. I found the instructions online for the spacing. I used a single length of freezer paper.

 

However we now have the Book of Time from Sonlight. We don't use Sonlight but it has been a wonderful all purpose time line in a book. :thumb:

[Mallory]

We have one that covers all history from 5000 BCE to today. It has about 2 feet per millenium.

 

Then underneath we do a "close up" of the time we are studing. We have done this for Modern Times, last year, so our close up time line only had to cover two centuries (early 1800's to early 2000's)- on that one each century is about 4 ft. This year we are doing Ancients and our close up has to cover about 3500 years (from about 3000 BCE to 500 CE) so each century is about 1/3 of a foot.

 

Quite frankly what decided how long they are is our wall. They are on a wall that is about 10 feet, and the big one goes around on to the walls at each end about 2 feet.

[mom31257]

I am having ds do a timeline of American history this year. I tried to set it up so that it's easy to add on. I took white cardstock and placed painter's tape across the middle (turned the cardstock landscape style). I connected about 20 sheets of cardstock. This allows me to fold it up in an accordian style for storage but extend it fully to view. It also will be easy to add more pages if I run out of space or remove pages if I have too many.

 

We write the dates on the painter's tape in permanent black marker, then use the space above and below for pictures and information. I just look for images on Google.

[Pam B]

Hmm... Interesting! I do like the cardstock idea with painter's tape. But also the close-up below the wall timeline.

 

Prairie rose,

I went to the link you added. Did you use different scales for different periods? I have heard of people doing this before, but I always thought it would give the kids a somewhat "off" big picture. I thought that was the whole point- or a main point of doing a timeline, was/is to help thhem to see when things took place compared to other events... etc.

 

So, right now, I'm thinking about going with a combo of all. Cardstock & painter's tape with the close-up below... But still I am undecided about the lengths.

[Pat in MI]

Well, I do not officially have ours done yet but it will be on the back of our school room door since we do not have a good wall for a timeline. So it will go vertically instead of horizontally. It is 6 ft. long. I am going to need to adjust the spaces based on where the most things occur in time. I just don't quite have it all worked out yet. I am planning on having the line go down the middle of the page so we can put information on both sides which will give us more space for the info. I used children's drawing paper that was on a roll. HTH

Blessings,

Pat

[thowell]

We had one that was about 20 feet long. I found the instructions online for the spacing. I used a single length of freezer paper.

 

This is the same spacing we use. We modified it a little. Our timeline is on one wall for all history. We have 3 rows which are around 10 feet each. The top row on the far right starts with the beginning and continues until the end of the timline with today's present year. We used poster board cut into strips that are about 1 foot from top to bottom. This gives us plenty of room to add figures. I attached the dates and all pictures with velcro ( in case we need to move them). The kids are getting a great idea of the dates and time span in history. Once it is full and we decided to take it down I will tape the pieces together with packing tape so it can be stored.

[prairie rose]

Prairie rose,

I went to the link you added. Did you use different scales for different periods? I have heard of people doing this before, but I always thought it would give the kids a somewhat "off" big picture. I thought that was the whole point- or a main point of doing a timeline, was/is to help thhem to see when things took place compared to other events... etc.

 

 

Yes we scaled the way the link suggested. I think you may be underestimating children's ability to comprehend. They can see that this area of the time line is showing every 100 years while this area (where more stuff is happening) shows every 50 years or every 10 years. Also from a practicality standpoint, if you put 5 years every two inches (because you will need that for more recent years but ancient times will have a lot of blank space), do you have 85 feet of wall space for a time line? Even our Book of Time scales putting more years per page in ancient times (when less is recordable) and fewer years as you get closer to the present (when you can fill the pages with recordable history and still not get everything on there) If every single page was only 5 years, it would be 585 pages or so. :001_huh:

 

Children who are ready to work with a time line can completely understand time line scaling.

[Hannah]

Ours is a triangular stepped one.

It steps up the BC years with two centuries per line up to the year 1 and then down again for AD. It has approximately 1.5 feet lengths per century until 1500.

From there the lines grow per century with 1900's being about 4 feet long.

I hope this description makes sense.

You can see a picture at the file section of this yahoo group.

 

Konos also has a triangular timeline that you can view here.

[Mallory]

Children who are ready to work with a time line can completely understand time line scaling.

 

Can I agree and disagree with this?

 

Sure I think most Logic aged children can understand that the centuries on this page are this long and on this page they are this long.

 

But I also think the span of time is something few people really get a good grasp of. Even if we are only talking about 5,000 years that passage of time is hard to understand. And timelines are one of the few hands on ways to show it.

 

When you change your scale so that you can spread out the last couple centuries you lose some of the impact that a long blank timeline can really impact. If your scale makes the Ancient Egyptian civilization look like it lasted as long as America has, I think for many kids (and especially visual learners), no matter how many times you talk about the difference in scale the impact of an egyptian civilization whose colored line is 10+ times as long as the brief colored line that stands for the United States of America compared to the tiny colored line that stands for thier own life is hard to replicate.

 

Or if your scale makes it look like cars were invented 1/4 of the way back to the first town, I just think that misses one of the big reasons to use a time line.

 

But since it is hard to show all that you want on one scale that is why I have been very happy with our close up time lines. The close up has room to hang figures and write info, but we can also find it on our whole time line and put the important things on there too.

[Pam B]

Can I agree and disagree with this?

 

Sure I think most Logic aged children can understand that the centuries on this page are this long and on this page they are this long.

 

But I also think the span of time is something few people really get a good grasp of. Even if we are only talking about 5,000 years that passage of time is hard to understand. And timelines are one of the few hands on ways to show it.

 

When you change your scale so that you can spread out the last couple centuries you lose some of the impact that a long blank timeline can really impact. If your scale makes the Ancient Egyptian civilization look like it lasted as long as America has, I think for many kids (and especially visual learners), no matter how many times you talk about the difference in scale the impact of an egyptian civilization whose colored line is 10+ times as long as the brief colored line that stands for the United States of America compared to the tiny colored line that stands for thier own life is hard to replicate.

 

Or if your scale makes it look like cars were invented 1/4 of the way back to the first town, I just think that misses one of the big reasons to use a time line.

 

But since it is hard to show all that you want on one scale that is why I have been very happy with our close up time lines. The close up has room to hang figures and write info, but we can also find it on our whole time line and put the important things on there too.

 

See, I agree fully with you! However, I had already taken the advise of the previous posters and made a scaled timeline. :001_huh: Maybe I will just ask the kids! I just want to START it already! KWIM?

[Pam B]

Does anyone else have an opinion on which way to set it up- as in scaled down the same or different??

[thowell]

Does anyone else have an opinion on which way to set it up- as in scaled down the same or different??

 

The one problem I could see arising if you scale everything the same is that some time periods are going to have alot more info entered. So you are either going to have some empty spaces or some really tightly arranged figures in the more recent years. That is why the scaling is different. We know alot more about things that have happened more recently than things that happened thousands of years ago. But I'm sure overall either method will work. Just go with what is easier for you. My girls are 7, 10, and 11 and they had no problem understanding the different scaling.