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happymama
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when it comes to teaching history, i am such a novice! my almost 5ds (who reads at a 3rd grade level) is ready for a method to help him organize the flow of history. We've mostly used Montessori up to this point, and I like the ideas of a large time-line permanently on the wall of the classroom, or a binder with a century on each page. What do you recommend? Where do I start? Are there any good websites out there to help me along?
A long time-line seems like a better way for the child to see the progression of history. But it would be hard for me to fit into the classroom, I think - the walls are already full as it is. A binder would be so much more portable. I know I could try both as the years go by, but I want to begin with just one. Thanks for your suggestions!
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Maryan
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Just a novice too... but I have a fold out timeline that's in book form (already made from Barnes and Noble) and started a book of centuries. The timeline works as the visual, but the Book of Centuries let's us do it ourselves, etc.
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Maryan
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nissag
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My midwife's family painted a timeline directly on to their kitchen wall! It was beautiful. It sort of snaked back and forth from side to side starting at the top of the wall and ending just above the level of the table. Their children then could place events along the timeline using paper and low-tack adhesive (like post-it notes).
They actually made it look quite lovely!
I do like the binder method, too. So I'm no help! 
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Nissa
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Cheryl
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I've just started to use a wall timeline because I think that my kids will look at it more often. We'll see. 
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Cheryl
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CKwasniewski
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We are wall-space challenged too!
Another idea:
Calvert has a poster of the Staircase of Time (it goes with the Child's History of the World, so, of course, its very simple), but history starts and the bottom and it goes up instead of across.
https://store.calvertschool.org/pc-131-1-a-childs-history-of -the-world-wall-poster.aspx
If you didn't want to use Calvert's poster, you could use their idea--it would certainly take MUCH less wall space!
blessings,
ck
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Rachel May
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We have a timeline on butcher paper on the wall. Like anything on the wall, it gets looked past eventually.
When we moved, it was hard to find a good spot for it so now it is up high, and since most of the history we've studied tends to be clumped between 1600 and 2000, there is a LONG mostly blank spot (we started at 1AD with the birth of Christ) and a space at the end that is enirely mishmashed. I definitely plan to switch to a binder where I can add pages where I need them and move it easily.
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Mackfam
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Jumping in here late, but thought I'd offer what we do. Each child gets their own timeline book. I use fan fold printer paper. You can still find it in an office supply store. We allow for one piece of paper to cover 50 years (except for pre-history which gets about 500 years per paper.) I use a pencil and a yardstick and make a pencil line right through the center of the paper running lengthwise. The top half of the paper is for illustrations and stickers and the bottom half is for recording events. The neat thing about these is that each year the children add to their timelines, so these are always a work in progress. When I'm just starting to introduce the concept of time, I like to unfold the fan folds to open the whole timeline. I do this down the hallway. It allows for that "visual" that I'd love to leave up all the time, but like you guys I'm challenged on wall space! I use those plastic magazine holders you find in Walmart to hold their timelines on a shelf in the learning room. Then, whenever they read about an "event in history, they pull out their timelines and illustrate and record. When working on the timelie you only have to open up a couple of pages leaving the rest folded together. This makes it more manageable for use in a small space. HTH!
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Jen Mackintosh
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happymama
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thanks for the replies.
Jennifer, does the fan-fold paper tear apart over time?
simply charlotte mason.com has a down-loadable 123-page book of centuries I might start with for now...
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Mackfam
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I'm a sucker for timelines  . Some people collect purses, others shoes...me...I love timelines! I like the simply charlotte mason version a lot too!
Our fan-fold hasn't torn apart yet, but my oldest is only in 6th grade.
My mom h'schooled my brother and sister all the way through and they wrote in their fan-folds from the beginning of their history studies until they graduated. They are real treasures now. Over the years they only had to tape a couple of perforated seams back together - if I wanted to I could still unfold theirs down my hallway for a great example of what hard work over the years will provide! Wanna know where I get my fetish for timelines?? My mom!  She had my brother and sister fill out a notebook of the centuries as well as their fan-folds. This was waaaaaaaay back before homeschooling was popular and Catholic Charlotte Mason was unheard of! Something about a fresh, new timeline - like a bundle of pretty unsharpened pencils - just begs to be gazed upon and filled out. lol! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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happymama
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wow, what a treasure you have in your mom! thanks for the ideas.
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ALmom
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We do like Jennifer, but use cardstock for ours. My husband designed a scale (helping the children and we are suckers for detail here so ours allow a lot more room for large printing, and stuffing in all kinds of details, etc.). The years are printed on the cardstock by the printer and then we tape the backside fanfold style. We buy three ring binders with pockets and they tuck their timelines in this pocket (unless it gets too thick) so that it is always available to them - but we unfurl the whole thing across the floor and walk the path from BC to AD if we need to. It also means that our children can replace individual pages if they want or restart another when they are older and no longer like the primary printing on it.
My 15 yo actually added the innovation of color coding different countries to keep straight some of the ancient history (ie Rome swallowed up a lot of ancient civiliations) and she could then see at a glance when Israels history was overlapping Greek or Roman History or that an early civilization that disappeared actually fed the Phoenician civilization. She used strips of colored construction paper glued on top of her time line in various lines - and if she made a mistake it was fairly easy to simply glue another piece of colored construction paper over the mistake.
We have had a ton of fun with each child making their own timeline - but generally use the oldest child's timeline to unfurl for the big picture. Using cardstock, they really hold up very, very well, even to my highly destructive group of boys. Some of my boys who hate writing found the timeline CDs helpful for pictures and avoid printing at all.
Janet
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JeniferS
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I love the cardstock idea! I am so happy to have found this thread! I've been wanting to start our timeline but haven't because I couldn't figure out where to tack it to the wall without driving my ultra-neat freak husband crazy. The foldable timeline is soooo perfect for us
I have a question about when you start your timeline, especially if it is a homemade one. Do you include all of the centuries right from the beginning? Or do you focus on say, the 20th & 21st centuries first and then add length & centuries as you need them? And if I start right away with prehistoric to modern times, how do you it? I can see giving each century one-two cards in AD, but once you hit BC, are you still going into such detail or are you putting larger chunks of time on the sections?
Thanks!
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Becky Parker
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For those who like a fan-fold style, in a binder, on cardstock, but don't want to make one, I bought this
from Rainbow Resources a few years ago and it has worked great. Granted, it costs more money than the kind you make yourself, but it comes 3 hole punched in a binder. We used it as a wall timeline for a while but when it started to become "invisible" on the wall, I put it back into the binder and we use it as a book of centuries. When the kids do a page about something they are particularly interested in, it can be inserted into the binder between the folds of the approximate date, if that makes any sense.
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Becky Parker
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Oops, my link above didn't work. Try this instead and if that doesnt work go to Rainbow Resources and do a search for "We Signed the Declaration When Beethoven Was Only Five?"
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Becky
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Mackfam
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JeniferS wrote:
I have a question about when you start your timeline, especially if it is a homemade one. Do you include all of the centuries right from the beginning? Or do you focus on say, the 20th & 21st centuries first and then add length & centuries as you need them? |
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It depends on what we're studying Jenifer. How old are your kids? Are you studying American History this year? I would probably just add pages that would be pertinent to American History. You can always go back and add pages later as you travel back in time to study different periods. If you have younger kids and are just starting to study history, I'd start at the beginning, adding pages for the span of history I plan on studying for the year. If you try to do the whole timeline at once (I should have said, if I tried to do the whole timeline all at once) it would be overwhelming. My suggestion would be to add pages for one span of history at a time.
JeniferS wrote:
| And if I start right away with prehistoric to modern times, how do you it? I can see giving each century one-two cards in AD, but once you hit BC, are you still going into such detail or are you putting larger chunks of time on the sections? |
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It depends on the time period. Remember, you can always go back and add more pages later if your timeline is in a notebook. Younger children will only be adding basics, but this timeline is meant to follow them all the way through, so you want to provide plenty of space for additions and illustrations throughout the years. As a rule, prehistory doesn't need as much space as say for instance you might need for the middle ages, or american history. I imagine every family has their own preference and as you start to dig in you will discover a "fit" with your children and how they timeline.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Mackfam
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Becky Parker wrote:
For those who like a fan-fold style, in a binder, on cardstock, but don't want to make one, I bought this
from Rainbow Resources a few years ago and it has worked great. |
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I love this timeline Becky. I've never seen it before, but it looks really neat for making a book of the centuries. Of course, I need another timeline like I need a hole in my head! But, I'm tempted none-the-less! I'm bookmarking! Thanks for the heads up Becky!
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Jen Mackintosh
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SallyT
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My 10yo has just started making his own timeline book, of "Great Battles of the World." He's really into military history! He's using just a regular old binder with printer paper we hole-punched, and each page is a century, with that century's battles. He was going to do "All the Great Battles of All Time!" but that got to be a bit overwhelming, so he's doing the ancient world. I'm not even sure exactly where he started or what he's been doing, though he works at it furiously almost daily.
The advantage of the binder is that you can add more pages wherever you need to, to flesh out the chronology. For instance, we're planning a round of US history next year, but he can keep making this timeline, just adding pages later on in the book. Still later, he could go back and fill in, say, the Wars of the Roses in the appropriate place. We have never, ever, ever been able to stick to a coherent chronological plan, going off on history rabbit trails all the time, and timelines help us to organize our rabbit trails into a coherent understanding of how events relate to each other in time. I like wall timelines, too, and we've had several ready-made ones of one kind or another, but this kid, anyway, is really responding to the "make your own book" thing, so that's what we're doing.
Sally
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Erin
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I decided to go with a family binder (detailed pics and instructions are here)
mainly because I was concerned that we would go to all the trouble of working on a wall timeline and it would fall off(my papers always fall off  ) and then get trampled and ruined and the dc wouldn't feel that there work was valued. Just me anyhow.
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JeniferS
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Thanks for sharing your links, Erin.
How many pages is your binder? I had thought of doing my pages in 50 year increments but I see that you & the Homeschool in the Woods site have broken it down even further (sometimes to 5 years per page). I know that I'd be abel to get alot more info on the page that way, but I'm worried that the book would be HUGE!
Hmm, just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if I could have binders for different eras. That way, I could break the years down like you have but the binders wouldn't be too thick. And the kids would get a nice visual of the time gone by with the binders sitting next to each other......what do you all think? I could do prehistoric era, ancient times, and then starting with birth/death of Christ each notebook could be 200 or 500 years.
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NavyMom
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I am following this thread and love all the pictures and links you are all sharing! I love Cheryl's wall timeline and hope to do something like that some day if space in our new home permits.
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: time-line or binder?
