I'm timelined challenged!! Please help me.

[Rose in BC]

I so desperately want to incorporate a timeline into our history study but I just can't wrap my brain around the best way to do it. I see many great ideas but I just don't know where to start. I want to begin work on this as a summer project (and continuing there after).

 

Can anyone offer me suggestions on how to just start and get going? I think what's hanging me up is the fact that we're studying the middle ages right now and so do I just start the timeline with that time period and add the ancients when we're in that loop again?

 

And what is the best time line? Wall? Books?

 

What are the best resources? (I've probably got some.)

 

I want a time line for my kids (and me). Any advice is appreciated.

[JaneNickerson]

I am very interested in this. I have been holding off on our timeline book. I plan on working on it this summer, too.

[muffinmom]

:lurk5:

[Another Lynn]

I don't have a timeline going right now, so take me with a grain of salt;). But one thing you *could* do if you wanted to catch ancients the next time around is start one in a book. Decide how to divide up the time/pages (i.e. one century per open page spread. Then just count up how many pages you need for ancients, skip them and start with medieval. One nice thing about doing it in a book is that your older children could each have their own making it more personal and meaningful for them. (maybe?) Or maybe there are some timeline "packages" where you start a new volume for each year - with the right number of pages for ancients, a new book with the number of pages for medieval, etc. - that would solve your problem of skipping ancients too.

 

Just thinking "out loud."

 

Good luck with it!

[tinkgumby]

Yes, I think that a book has many advantages over a wall. The "Book of Time" from Sonlight that I have has a dated timeline from 5000 BC to present, so you could flip right to where you were and hang on to it for the next time around! Or, if it really bothers you, I guess you could do a brief "review" period and slap all those missing figures on where they belong. :D

[MountainViewMom]

I understand completely. It took me three (maybe four) years to finally figure out how I wanted to do a timeline. I can't say this is the best way, but this is what I found works for us. Also, we don't have a good wall to use for a timeline either. I always thought that would be good way.

 

First, I made each child a timeline beginning 5000 BC going forward until present day. I had it spiral bound at a local copy center. I left the front cover blank for them to decorate. Sonlight has a good one and mine is similar to theirs.

 

Now, once a quarter (or whenever) we have a block of time, we add in people and events that we have just studied. We use the Home School in the Woods timeline figures. I have copies for each child to use.

 

This way we can add to the book each time we go through the time period.

 

Is that clear as mud? HTH!

[Jill in Maine]

I am also very interested in this. I am considering using the Easy Timeline Creator. Has anyone used this and have any comments on it. It seems that this way it would be easy to add things in at a later date while still keeping things neat and orderly.? I imagine you could even print it out and have students write things in by hand as you go, and then periodically go into the software and up date these and reprint. Does this make sense. Maybe I'm confused about how this works.

Jill

[Rose in BC]

I am very interested in this. I have been holding off on our timeline book. I plan on working on it this summer, too.

 

.

[LG Gone Wild]

:lurk5:

[oceandaughter]

Do you mean an already bound book or a notebook?

[Chris in VA]

I've posted about mine before, but fwiw, here goes--

 

The first year, we used a roll of paper and measured it out to fit the blank wall. We had about 8 feet or so to work with. I divided Ancients up by centuries, leaving about a foot blank at the beginning for Before 5000. I am undecided whether or not I'm young earth, but I know I'm not "6000 year young earth," so I simply put our biblical history that fit before around 5000 in that space. I marked a line down the middle of the sheet, and attached figures in the appropriate places as we came to them. Homeschool in the Woods has really nice figures. We certainly didn't use all of them. The paper was about a foot wide, so there was plenty of space for more than one figure. I didn't worry about being highly accurate in placement, just in the general area (this was for 1st grade). My son also had one on his wall, which ran about 7 ft--I made him divide up the years, since he's in high school. He did not use figures, just wrote a notation on or near the line.

 

My dd got tired of coloring the figures, and did not really enjoy the timeline, but I wanted to make one this year, too. We ended up making a very simple book, out of 12x18 construction paper turned lengthwise and punched with 3 holes on the left side. I bound it with 3 rings, so we could unbind it and lay it out if we wanted to. Across each page, I drew a line about 2/3 of the way up, and labeled each page for 100 years. I made a mistake and started with the Year 0, so don't do that! :D For figures, we used Hannah's homeschool helps (google it), and then added in our own from yahoo images. I used some of the same images for notebook pages, but not every time. These were colorful, cheap, and fun for dd--she didn't have to color them, she got to pick from lots of options each time (we would do a narration or copywork for the notebook, pick a picture from yahoo, and sometimes use it for the timeline; sometimes I had one already). We made an attractive cover using yahoo images, filling a blue piece of construction paper with lots of figures, and adding a title.

 

It's low tech, but very attractive, and gets the job done. She'll have it for a long time, even tho it's not a super wonderful book someone else made. It took the pressure off of us to have something homemade--if a little glue got on it, so what--I would have wanted the Sonlight book to look perfect, and probably wouldn't have let dd do it herself. She really enjoys seeing her choices, and really does notice which historical figures lived at the same time.

[Rose in BC]

Thank you.

[Handmaiden]

I made American History timeline books for my kids. Using MS Publisher (you could also use Word), I drew a line through a page horizontally (ie, landscape orientation) and put a date, let's say 1500, then printed it out. On the next page I changed it to 1550, then printed it out, and kept doing that until I had an entire notebook of blank pages. I used cardstock so that they could hold up to the gluing in of figures.

 

For the timeline figures I used the AWESOME History Through the Ages CD by Homeschool in the Woods. I just looked for the person or event I needed and printed them out. The kids would color them in and paste them into the timeline. The figures are also available in a book format, but I find it easy to print out straight from my computer. I intend to use this CD all the way through high school so it was worth it.

 

I also had them put in little photos of themselves, my husband and I, as well as grandparents on the pages corresponding to their year of birth.

 

Here are some helpful Timeline tips and samples. I used the horizontal format.

[neesek]

I am hoping to do a notebook timeline next year, so I found this thread very helpful a couple of weeks ago:

 

http://67.202.21.157/forums/showthread.php?t=27562

 

Many of the links posted on that thread were just what I needed!

[AudreyTN]

I debated for a long time about how to do mine also. Finally, I decided on a snake timeline. Here's the link to my pics.

 

I've made a separate US History timeline since we're doing that this year. I'll have to post pics of that soon...

 

 

[Tina]

Someone shared an idea with me a long time ago that I like. Use different colors of paper for each continent; then have all the colors in your notebook to add to during the same time period.

[BizyPenguin]

Paula's Archives (Lots of great timeline articles)

Hold That Thought (Love their stuff and they sell some very very nice looking timeline notebooks and figures that won't break the bank!)

JK Schooling (They sell some whimsical timeline figures and a scrolling wall timeline. They also have a good article or two and some samples.)

Knowledge Quest Maps (Love their timeline stickers and they also sell a nice looking bound timeline book.)

Homeschool in the Woods (Excellent ideas about timelines and wonderful timeline figures)

 

 

Surely one of these links should be helpful. All the best!

[JaneNickerson]

I was just inspired. I have the Book of Time from Sonlight but I felt like I was making a mess just slapping in Amy Pak's figures. My early morning idea is...to place the figures on color coded cardstock first: purple for kings/queens, red for wars/battles,..Okay, now I need help...how many divisions and what are they?!

So far I thought of:1. kings/queens

2. wars/battles

3. science

4. music/art

Any I am missing?

[Christine]

 

And what is the best time line? Wall? Books?

 

 

 

I actually know the answer to this one!

 

(it's whichever one works best for you)

 

We (myself and older two) tried a notebook timeline. I have to say it's mighty pretty. I used Amy Pak's figures (gif format), and added some of my own, printed out all the pages (with most of the figures already on them). Each page was divided neatly and had room for us to write and add to.

 

AND. . .

 

we don't ever use the thing. So, now it's a beautiful dust collector.

 

A friend of mine does an abbreviated time line every year. I like "how" she does it, so I'm going to incorporate it with my younger kids when we start our history studies.

 

She hung a line (puts a whole new meaning on "time-line" doesn't it?) on her wall, then makes cards for the things they study, and hangs them from there. (She's a unit study kind of gal, and not "classically minded" so their history for this year consisted of the Civil War era and Industrial Revolution.) She has a picture representing what they studied on the front, as well as the date(s) and a summary on the back.

 

I have stairways in my home, and I think I will use them for the backdrop of our "timeline". I'm seriously considering the color-coding as well.

 

One benefit of the "line", I think to the notebook, is you can see the larger picture.

 

Also, I'm rather. . .ummm. . ."anal" and I had serious issues about going back and forth in the notebook to place pictures / notes and try to fit them in all nice and neat. (And I've noticed with history, it's rather difficult to go in a nice, neat, straight line.) With the line, I would just add another clip and card (cards will be of uniform size, and I can just move them as necessary along the line). Nor will I have to fret about all those blank pages that have nothing but the timeline on them (especially true during ancient times). If there are a number of events during particular years (which there always are), I can hang cards vertically from each other.

 

Anyway, that's the plan. . .we'll have to see how I like it once we start.

[Rhonda in TX]

This from one of my favorite blogs. Her kids do a timeline book starting in 5th grade. The pages are divided into 5 different sections, which makes it much neater.

 

Book of Centuries

 

For pre-5th grade, they do a wall timeline.

 

Wall Timeline

[SnowWhite]

I found this squidoo lens, by my friend Jimmie in China to be very helpful:

 

http://www.squidoo.com/homeschooltimelines

 

For our timeline this year, I did an accordion folded line just for the era we're studying (age of exploration-1850 Amer history). I color-coded the background based on what was going on in that time period... blue for exploration, green for colonization, purple for colonial conflicts, red for the American Revolution, yellow for establishment of American government, orange for Westward expansion. I will try to get a pic taken and post it here later. I didn't "scale" the timeline... I had one sheet for pre-history (Indians and Vikings), one for discovery/exploration, and then I went to 100 year increments for colonization, then 10 year increments for the later history (1750-1850). So we have the "sequence" but no concept of the time scale.

[Wholeheartedmom]

I used printer paper that is connected to make our time lines, one per child. We kept them folded, accordion style in an accordion file, but we could open them up when we wanted to. I counted out the required number of squares, then drew a line through each one and added the dates by century. The kiddos then added pictures and texts as they came across items they wanted to put on their time lines. Each one did theirs differently. One dc drew lots of detailed pictures, another added so much text, with text balloons drawn everywhere you could hardly read the thing.

[AudreyTN]

Someone gave me pos rep points on this thread. I'm just curious who it was...

 

THANK YOU! :001_smile:

[Brindee]

Past threads with good timeline info and some pictures:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25064&highlight=timeline

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19477&highlight=timeline

[jenn&charles]

Here's a link to what I made and use:

http://www.ourlosbanos.com/homeschool/history/timeline.html

I have it in a PDF so you can take a look and print it out, if it's the kind you like/want.

 

I've tried several different timeline methods and the one that worked best for my family was for us to each have our own timeline book. The pages are 3 hold punched and put into a binder. When we fill up a page, I insert a half page in the same section.

 

When we read a book that is set in a specific time period, we paste in a picture of the cover (just use google images or whatever).

That is a great review for all of the books we've read and it makes it more clear when they happened.

 

Otherwise we paste in figures from google images or draw in pictures or write in text. I've also used timeline figures in the past.

[mycalling]

I finally decided how we're going to do ours. I think the kids will gain the most by being able to see it all the time, so we're doing a wall timeline on our attic playroom's slanted ceiling. It's low enough to add to it easily, but over toy storage so the little ones can't pull it down.

 

I am getting a roll of paper 18"x75' ($6.95 at RR) and putting it up in 3 long strips labeled 4,000bc-present. It will have a black length of yarn with colored knots along it down the center for the timeline and we'll add to it with other colored yarn to show lengths of time and type of event or civilization by color. Then of course clipart and info. With 18" of height, I can even branch up wider for more detail in a short time period like for the Civil War and WWI and II.

 

I decided to get clipart offline instead of buying a CD-Rom since all that I looked at didn't include the types of extras I figured we'd care to put on like art and music, scientific discoveries, or when classic books were written. We can just save pictures then size them in Word.

[ABQmom]

I didn't read many of the other posts, so please forgive if I duplicate info.

 

I had a real hard time coming up with something that would work for us with timelines too. I finally have something I really like. I cut 8.5 x 11 sheets of white cardstock in half and joined them end to end (the long way) with packing tape on the back. I drew a straight line with a Sharpie right along the middle, wrote in the dates I wanted, and put this on our wall. For ancients and middle ages, it is only 4 half sheets long. I then Googled images of people/events as we studied them, and taped them with double sided stick tape to the timeline in the correct spot. For us, keeping it small and simple is key. After the year of study is complete, I have that portion of the timeline laminated. We will add to it this year of course, and I'm guessing because we are getting into modern times, it will have to be a bit longer.

 

I tried the book method. What I found is that it looked great--dd did a fabulous job of illustrating it herself, but we never looked at it. The kids really like having the timeline on the wall. They actually enjoy looking over it, and I think they've learned from it.

[Lynn in Caribbean]

...made of 8.5 x 11 cardstock. We did a separate timeline for each period, so they each have more than one actually.

 

I tape the cardstock together with packing tape along the back and fold up accordian style. When it is folded, it can sit on their shelf with their books. When we want to get the big picture we can stretch it out across the floor.

 

I don't have space for a wall timeline (or much space of any kind in our tiny house). And the thing that bugged me about a timeline in a notebook is that, well, it's not a line. I don't ever get the timeLINE effect - I can only ever see one page at a time, which to me defeated the purpose of gathering all those bits of info in one place to see how the big picture fits together. So, our accordian style timeline works for us - I can store it away, yet we can spread it out to see where we are in our history studies and how events are fitting together.

 

The real question is, WHAT am I doing up at this hour? Serious insomnia going on here...

[Kim in SouthGa]

I took an idea off the Donna Young website and tweaked it a bit. We use a three ring binder, and I printed the beginning year on the far left of the left page with a line running to the right, then a line with the year at the far right of the right page. We put stickers or google images I find along the line with the date. I take summaries my son writes from KF or other history sources and cut them to size, then glue them on the appropriate page. If we need more space for a time frame, I take a page and cut the top three inches off, then add it. This leaves the years still visible. I color coded the time periods, for instance we are studying early modern and all the pages are green. When we study modern all the pages will be a different color, and so on. Clear as mud? I will try to take a pic and put it on my blog later today.

HTH

[ClassicMom]

We had one that ran both sides of the hallway, then we had one that was more snakelike. Finally, LAST YEAR we started using "History Through The Ages Timeline". We love it. We've used their figures for years.

 

One thing that we've added is to back the figures in a colored cardstock based on theme. For instance, science is green, person is purple, etc...

 

I still have a VERY basic wall chart for my youngest but it only covers what he is doing in that year and it only covers about the area of a bulletin board. When he begins studying ancients, I will begin a real timeline book for him; just not as expensive. There are also sticker figures out there that I need to find for him instead of having to use the HTTA figures.

 

Anyway, that's how we finally did it. Wish it hadn't taken us so long to figure it out since oldest is pretty much done with school except for her work study! :eek: