Tell me about timelines

[mo2]

My dd is only 5, so we haven't used a timeline yet. I've seen the ones you can purchase, and I've also heard of people making their own. I guess my question is: What exactly do you DO with the timeline? Does anyone have a link to an example of a timeline so I can see what we're talking about?

Thanks!

[Narrow Gate Academy]

with a 1st and 3rd grader. Our timelines are homemade, and we're putting figures from the HTTA cd in them as we cover the topics in history. Here's a link to our timeline (http://narrowgateacademy.blogspot.com/search/label/timeline) on our blog. You can look at our weekly reports to see when we add to them.

[hwfquilts]

We use the Homeschool in the Woods timeline figures. I have the CD so I can print them off myself. The CD is pricey, but I can't say enough wonderful things about it - you can size the figures as large as a page to make coloring pages, you can create multiple timelines, you can reprint when your child makes a mistake while coloring the figure. For us, it was money well-spent.

I took a blank wall in our dining room (which is actually where we eat all our meals since we don't have an eat-in kitchen; we have a separate schoolroom, but it is a sunroom, so there is no wall space for a timeline) and painted lines and year numbers from 5000 BC to the more-or-less present, ceiling to floor. It is "telescoped" in that the ancient times have fewer inches per range of years and more modern times have more inches. As we study history, we color figures and put them on the wall.

The main purpose of the timeline is to remind us of what we've already studied and to help us with the flow of history. Sometimes I say it's more for me than for the kids :) It is always interesting to see what happened simultaneously in different cultures (Mycenaean civilization and Joseph of the Old Testament, for example). I think even for younger children it does help to "see" history - they are concrete in their thinking, so perhaps they don't really understand the concept of the timeline, but they can see the pictures representing people and events and it helps them put it all together.

I have a 2nd and a 6th grader. We plan to do notebook timelines in the future once our wall is filled. We get lots of compliments from people who see our timeline. Our dining room is fairly formal (antique furniture, a huge oil painting, toile curtains...), but the timeline fits right in.

I'll try to take a picture and post it later.

Hope this helps -

Heather

[Chris in VA]

Our timeline (http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg153/discoverychris/100_0637.jpg)
Inside our timeline (http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg153/discoverychris/100_0638.jpg)
We used 12x18 construction paper, drew a line across the upper third of it, and labeled each page for 100 years. We do a narration about something in history (a person or famous event), make a notebook page about it, and then find a picture or two on yahoo images. We put one picture on the timeline, and either use the same picture or another one for the top our dd's notebook page.
There are lots of examples of her notebook narrations pages on my blog.
The timeline serves as a visual review of what we have studied, and we also can compare cultures--what was happening in, say, India, while X was happening in, say, England? I'm not as concerned that dd learn the years associated with the events and people. I'm going for exposure and familiarity this time around.
Last year, we did use the Homeschool in the Woods figures, and made a very long timeline across the wall. Dd didn't want to color the figures this year, so we search for images. Cheap, and colorful!

[Maria/ME]

You've got some great ideas listed here.
I really didn't have the room at the time to do a timeline in our house, and I also wanted the timeline to be portable as we take our studies "out and about" very often.
I LOVE the timeline at Homeschool Shop (http://www.thehomeschoolshop.com/sh-timelines.htm). I found it easy to use and of flexible use. And the cost actually made more sense for me, than to make my own and print it out. There is more than enough pages in here to do whatever you could wish.

HTH,

[Beth in Central TX]

I don't start timeline work until 5th grade. Once they've reached the logic stage, I purchase each boy a timeline called We Signed the Declaration When Beethoven Was Five from Rainbow Resource. Each week I go through their history spine and highlight the relevant dates. On the days that they have history reading, they read the assigned pages and put the highlighted dates on their timeline. As they progress through the 4 years of the logic stage, they are building a great visual of what they've learned in history.

[AudreyTN]

It took me forever to decide how I wanted to do it. First I thought of making a book. Then I decided to make a Snake Timeline on 2 pieces of posterboard. I've been using address labels to draw my pics and then writing something short and sweet. :)

My kids are still young, so we're not going for detail. Just a few reference points.

Here's a link to my timeline. (http://opusdeiacademy.blogspot.com/2008/01/timeline-is-up.html)

[Jill, OK]

You have to scroll down to the bottom; it's a lapbook-esque thing, three pieces of cardstock taped to fold, accordion-style.

For this age (my two that are using this are 6 and 7), I feel it's important to get a feel for history and the sequential-ness of it. It's simply, "This happened before/after this". No dates. I have sections labeled ancient, medieval, early modern and modern, but no dates. Only a few pictures, and once in a while we'll get it out when we've read about someone, and figure out where they would be.

When my two oldest were in about third grade (when I start using SOTW), we put a piece of contac paper on a hall wall, and I labeled it in, I think two or three inch increments, and we stuck our history projects on the wall, in chronological order. (Chinese writing, model of the Nile delta, etc. Anything that would lend itself to being attached to the wall.) This way, we're killing two birds with one stone; temporarily displaying the (few) hands-on projects we do, and reminding ourselves of what happened when. Hopefully, I can do something similar with these kids next year.

My older kids will have a book-style timeline next year, I'm guessing, that will be more of a 'see the relationships between these things' type deal.

I look at a simple timeline in the grammar stage as a tool, much like learning to read a clock or calendar. (Only simpler, really; much more general.)

Click here for blog post containing simple lapbook timeline (http://cribchick.blogspot.com/2008/01/already-time-for-another-weekly-update.html)