Timelines

[nov05mama]

OK, so if you have them, tell me how you made yours! I want to keep ours REALLY simple for now, but since we are doing some unit studies here and there on different civilizations and such, I am interested in getting a general timeline made for him that we can continue to add to throughout the school years.

Do you just have a string labeled with dates? What do you mark when you add things to your timeline? Basically, I need a Timelines 101 lesson :

[Teensy]

Ours was super simple. We took a roll of easel paper (Melissa and Doug white roll), drew a line down it about 15 feet long, made 1 cm = 10 years, used a ruler to mark off every 100 years, then start added events. We started with the basics (Christ born (roughly, I know), Mom born, DS born) and added as we learned.

I don't HS anymore, but I still pull out the timeline scroll and add history dates as the kids learn them in school.

[ktgrok]

http://www.amazon.com/Wonders-Timeli...f=pd_rhf_p_t_4

[Nitenites]

We bought a blank timeline book from Sonlight. It's pre-printed, and spiral-bound. It was about $20. The kids love looking back at the events they've filled out in previous years. (Which brings me to another point - I'm so glad it's durable. That was a must for us, since I wanted to expand on it year after year.)

[zjande]

We don't have great wall space for a long timeline, our walls are super bumpy & I wouldn't be able to write well on them, plus my kids would destroy a paper on the wall in 8.2 seconds. SooooooOo, what I finally ended up doing after much thought, was put ours in a binder.

I measured out 4 lengths of butcher paper. I folded each of them accordian style & hole punched them. I trimmed them up so they'd fit just right in the binder. Then I wrote our timeline on them, with the time divided up in 4 lengths. When we want to use our timeline we can just unfold our timeline out of the binder across the table. That's what works for us!

[ChinaDoll]

Originally Posted by Nitenites

We bought a blank timeline book from Sonlight. It's pre-printed, and spiral-bound. It was about $20. The kids love looking back at the events they've filled out in previous years. (Which brings me to another point - I'm so glad it's durable. That was a must for us, since I wanted to expand on it year after year.)

We did this as well. In the future, I'm hoping to buy the Homeschool in the Woods cd for timeline figures.

[tallulahma]

Originally Posted by Nitenites

We bought a blank timeline book from Sonlight. It's pre-printed, and spiral-bound. It was about $20. The kids love looking back at the events they've filled out in previous years. (Which brings me to another point - I'm so glad it's durable. That was a must for us, since I wanted to expand on it year after year.)

I think I am going to get that one!


ive been thinking of ways to make a timeline for all the things dd1 learns about- she is obsessed with history and I think she would love something to flip through to help her get the flow of it all.

thanks! that one looks perfect.

[CherryBomb]

We use book of time from sonlight, I really like it (and it's spiral bound, yay!)

[nov05mama]

I really like that Sonlight one...I found printable pages (for free) from GuestHollow HERE, which look really similar, and I was going to see what it would run to just send the file to Kinkos and have them bind it for me, but I am happy to see one already ready to go like that!! I planned to have them do it on either heavy gauge paper or cardstock, so this may be a cheaper route anyway...not to mention I really like their timeline figures too!!
Sounds like I need to take a trip to our local homeschool store to see if they have it there first!! YAY!
Thanks everyone!!

[tammyw]

Probably a completely stupid question, but what exactly do you do with these timelines? Are the dates already in them? And you fill them out with the historical happenings? Another stupid question - but what's the benefit of that over say one that is completely filled in?

[be11ydancer]

I like the ideas for timelines on donnayoung.com. Make your own using a sketchbook (or binder with cardstock) with a line drawn across the top of each page marking the dates, say one page for every 50 or 100 years. Then add text, and drawn, printed, or sticker images of historical figures and things. We'll do this because I don't want the preprinted timeline that assumes the earth is only 6000 years old. I guess that means our timeline binder is going to be very, very thick.