I really enjoy history. Historical novels, documentaries, biographies – I just eat it up. So you can imagine how much fun I have in teaching history to my children. I particularly enjoy using timelines in our school, in fact I have a book of time just for me. Timelines can be such a simple tool to use to help your child understand history. Placing people and events on to a timeline shows the order in which things happens, which in turn illustrates how one event led to another. Timelines show which events were happening at the same time, or which people who never even met were living during the same time period.
So many good reasons to use a timeline to teach history, but where to begin?
Timeline Figures on CD-ROM
I particularly enjoy the timeline products by Amy Pak of Homeschool In the Woods. I use her History Through the Ages set on CD-ROM which includes over 1200 figures from creation to now. With this set, you have the choice of printing out any historical figure with or without text, and at any size. You print out exactly what you need when you need it. With this kind of versatility, you can print figures as coloring pages, illustrations for reports, for notebooking or lapbooking projects, or for timelines, either notebook size or wall size.
Included on the CD-ROM is all the information on the Timeline Helps page. Are you looking for more ways to use your timeline figures? Check out the great ideas on this page! I particularly like her idea for using timeline figures and the accompanying text to create a penmenship notebook.
A Record of Time
Another favorite product from Homeschool In the Woods is the Record of Time. When I first 
discovered the Record of Time, my children had already started timeline notebooks of their own and I could not justify spending money on new books just because they were prettier then the ones they were using. Yet I kept coming back to the website and looking at that Record of Time. The gorgeous full color cover and beautiful maps just intrigued me. Finally, I broke down and bought one for myself! I am very much enjoying putting together my own timeline along with my children. I told you I love history! The picture to the left is a page from my Record of Time.
I see that now Amy Pak offers a CD-ROM of her timeline pages and the beautiful maps that come with them. You can print out as many pages as you need for your family, in both horizontal and vertical format. She also offers empty Record of Time notebooks. She even includes her Suggested Placement Guide on the Record of Time CD.
Eliminate the Guesswork
Speaking of the Suggested Placement Guide – this is the perfect tool for those of us who want to create a timeline but are afraid of doing it wrong. This guide shows you how every one of the History Through the Ages figures will fit on the timeline, so you can best determine how to place them. This is particularly helpful to me as I’m going through world history for the first time with younger students. At this point we will not be covering all the historical figures, but we will need to leave room for them to be placed in the future.
One thing I often hear from homeschool moms is that they always forget to use their timelines, so let me just share quickly how we use them in our home. Using my instructor’s guide, I make a note of the timeline figures we will be using during the school year. Once a week I check that list to see which figures we have covered over the past week. If it’s less than three, then we wait for the following week. As soon as we’ve accumulated 3 or more figures, we add them to our timelines. As I cut out a figure from the sheet of paper, I tell my children who it is and ask them to tell me what they remember about the person or the event. Using our timelines this way gives us a quick and easy review every couple of weeks.
With the great tools available, it is fun and easy to create your own timeline to enhance your study of history. If you aren’t using a timeline, I would highly encourage you to get one started!
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You can find Lorri at The Mac and Cheese Chronicles when she’s not happily teaching history.
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