One of the things I love most about the way we learn history is our Timeline Book. When I first read about the idea of a history timeline or book of centuries, I was kind of intimidated. I don’t remember much that I learned in history class growing up, so the idea of filling in blanks in a big book of empty dates was terrifying. How in the world was I going to teach my children history if I, myself, couldn’t tell you what happened when?!
When we used The Playful Pioneers last year, I found the idea of timeline cards. The original intent was to have one timeline card and create a big visual timeline somewhere on the wall - but I knew my kids would want to complete their OWN timeline cards, and I didn’t want two big visual timelines, so I came up with the idea of a Timeline Book.
Once a week, we cut a piece of cardstock into 4x6 pieces, choose something from our readings and add a year and a brief caption. The girls draw whatever they want to help them remember the tidbit and then we add it to their timeline books.
We use 4x6 “brag books” for storing printed photographs that I picked up at a thrift store. We don’t necessarily do the timeline cards in order - two weeks ago we added one for 1902, and today we made one for the Statue of Liberty in 1886. One of the reasons I do it this way, even though we are mostly learning history chronologically, is because it encourages them to go back through their books and review what’s already there. Sometimes they have to rearrange cards to make space for an older card - and it gives them a little glimpse of how we learn things over the years. As adults, we often looking back to different times in a nonsequential order. When I have them add a timeline card for a previous decade we’ve studied, it helps them make a connection between what we’ve just read and what we read about last year.
Because they loved this part of our week so much last year, I decided to continue with it this year as we shifted into using A Gentle Feast - and I’m so glad I did! We’ve been able to see how different life was in the late 1800s New York City compared to the life the Wilders were living on the prairie in the late 1800s.
This is one of their favorite activities - and I’m always so encouraged by how excited they get to add a new card to their books. They also love to show it off to anyone who comes to visit. I guess this makes sense - I mean, they’ve created their own really cool history picture books - why wouldn’t they want to share it with the world?
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