Time line for 1st grade Ancients

[Renthead Mommy]

If you've already done a first grade time line I'm hoping you can help me.

I have plenty of wall space so I wanted to do an actual time line, not the kind in a 3 ring.

For first grade Ancinets, (we are using History Odyssey 1 which uses SOTW along UILE and CHOW) how much space (pages? file folders? whatever you used?) did you use for how many years? For instance is two feet of time line enough space for 1000 years in the first grade level? Or would it need to be longer?

What has worked for you? Did you wish you made yours longer? Shorter? How many years did you cover in how many pages of line? How did you break it down year wise?

I was going to make a line out of file folders, but a friend suggested to look at Beautiful Feet's time line, especially for their pictures (I haven't had a chance to look yet). Any other really good suggestions?

Thanks.

[Jill, OK]

When my two oldest were doing Ancients, I had a hall with plenty of wall space, so we stuck up a length of contac paper, and marked it off. (I can't remember the exact increments, but...that will depend on how much space you have, total, anyway. Just measure and divide into the number of centuries you need to put up).

When we did a project that lent itself well to being stuck on the wall, we made a narration on a note card (or wrote it directly on the contac paper) and put them up. Hieroglyphs, clay cuneiform tablets, model of the Nile...all of those do nicely. You can also make drawings or use SOTW activity pages (or even the cards).

It was great. Not only could they see the chronology of what we'd studied at a glance...it was a good conversation piece for guests making their way to the bathroom, lol.

We're doing something similar again, this year, with my new batch of Ancient-studiers. :) Only this time I don't have a wall, so we're using a tri-fold foam presentation board.

[Hannah]

You can find a template for the lines of a wall timeline and pictures for SOTW1 and SOTW2 as well as a template for the pictures at the file section of this Yahoo Group (http://http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hannah_hs_helps).

It's not a very good picture, but you can get an idea of what our timeline looks like on the wall above the desk in this photo.
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The way we have it, it measures about 2 m wide (6.5 feet) and 1.2 m (4 feet) high. I have a prehistory line at the bottom left, and then it steps up from 3000 bc to the year 0. From 0 to 1500 it has a strips of 40 cm (15 inch) per century, 2 per line, that step down. After that the entire line is a century and it grows in length as the centuries follow one another.

ETA: You could make a narrower timeline by starting at the floor and going up on century at a time as well. To fit our pictures our lines are about 7 cm (2.5 inches) apart, but if your pictures size differs, they could be wider apart or narrower.

Hope this helps!

[Pata]

We use Hannah's timeline figures(thanks Hannah), plus a few of my own that I added. I cut pieces of contruction paper in half width wise and taped them together and then put them on the wall. The reason I did this is because three of our figures fit on each page. Then I figured out the dates and marked off the dates what I would need for the three figures. Is that clear as muddy water? I'm not so concerned with her remembering dates as I am with her remembering the flow of the history we study this year. I put a picture of my timeline in my weekly report this week on my blog. There's a link to it in my siggy below...

[Renthead Mommy]

Thanks everyone.

I guess what I'm afraid of is not leaving enough space for everything we'd want to put up in each section.

Next question - how did you break up your years? I just don't want the years of more recorded history to not have enough room. Where does the history really start picking up speed? Can I break it down into 500 year segments? Should I start giving more room and break it down to 100 year segments at some point? 1500 BC? 1000BC?

Does this look right, or can i condense it down some in early years where there is less 'action' to post?

5000 - 4500 -4000- 3500 - 3000 - 2500 - 2000 - 1500-1000-500-0-100-200-300-400-500

[Hannah]

Next question - how did you break up your years?

In the triangle-like shape we have above, the strips are about 15 inches in length for 3000 bc to 0 and from 0 to 1499. 1500 to 1599 is about 2.5 feet, 1600 to 1699 about 2.75 feet and a bit longer piece for every following century. 1900 to 1999 is just over 3 feet long.

[mumtoo3]

sorry to jump in here but dd is starting sotw now, do children this young understand a timeline? as another site said no so i am confused :confused:
any tips please

[Pata]

sorry to jump in here but dd is starting sotw now, do children this young understand a timeline? as another site said no so i am confused :confused:
any tips please

I just know from our personal experience. Our wall timeline has really helped my dd figure out the flow of history, ie the old kingdom of Egypt came first, then the middle kingdom and then the new kingdom. We have memorized some dates, but they seem meaningless to her. We also have Sonlight's Book of Time and I don't think that this helps as much for now, but I can see that later it will be a tremendous resource, so we keep putting our figures in. I hope that helps you.

[claire up north]

I am responding to the question about whether a 1st grader can understand a timeline.

My answer is "yes, but..." I do think that a timeline helps kids see what came first, second, and so forth. Kids at that age have a really difficult time making sense of how far away Christmas is, much less how long ago Nero ruled!

That said, for us a timeline just didn't offer enough bang for the buck. I think it was because doing a good timeline takes a lot of work (at least for this family!), and I didn't think it added that much to their knowledge of history. They got more out of projects and discussions than working on the timeline. (More fun, more tactile, more memorable)

Now that we have started ancients for the 2nd time around, my kiddos ask many more questions about "when," a sure indication to me that they are ready to get the most out of the timeline project.

[kellycbr]

I'm itching to get our wall timeline up. I love your wall timeline Hannah! My question is what are your favorite timeline figures? Do you use a variety of resources? I need to keep this as easy as possible because of all the teacher intesive curriculums we're doing right now. Thanks!

[Hannah]

sorr do children this young understand a timeline?

I don't think that my dd had a very clear idea of the time periods involved (or that she has it now aged 8), but with the timeline, history cards and memory sentences she has visual reminders for the sequence of events. It also helped to reinforce what we'd learned earlier.

I love your wall timeline Hannah! My question is what are your favorite timeline figures? Do you use a variety of resources?

Thanks Kelly! I use google images for the timeline pictures. If you're using SOTW1 and SOTW2, I've made our pictures and a template available at the Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hannah_hs_helps).

[kellycbr]

Thanks Kelly! I use google images for the timeline pictures. If you're using SOTW1 and SOTW2, I've made our pictures and a template available at the Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hannah_hs_helps).


Sweet! I'll check it out. Thanks again!