History Timelines

When I was in school I really hated history- it was such a boring subject to me. "Read the chapter, answer the questions at the end, remember the information just until the test, then forget it" It wasn't until just a few years ago- (as I was teaching my boys) that I actually began to enjoy history.

What made the difference? For starters- interesting stories- many of the FIAR stories we've done have talked about different time periods or events in history- stories that happen during World War II (A New Coat for Anna) lessons that mention the US receiving the Statue of Liberty as a gift (The Giraffe that Walked to Paris). As I read these stories- I became more interested in the time periods and events of the books.

The 2nd thing that's made a huge differnce in the way I view studying history is Timelines. History suddenly makes more sense to me as I view it in a timeline. As I was reading one day about Hellen Keller, the book mentioned Mark Twain. For me and my silly brain, I never would have put the 2 together in the same time period. It's so exciting as we put events in our timelines to realize what things were happening at the same time periods.

Our timeline notebooks are quite simple. It's a 3-ring binder with divider tabs. The divisions are creation-1000 BC, 1000 BC-0, 1AD-1500, 1500-1800, 1800-present. Then whenever we "put something in the timeline" we write the year in the top right corner of the page, and write what happened that year. Here's Doodle's entry for today- Milton Hershey born- 1857. Then comes the fun part- figuring out when in history this happened. The kids open their timeline books and begin flipping pages.... "Let's see- it's after 1800" so go to the last section. "1802- Louisiana purchase"...nope- after that, flip a few more pages "1849- California Gold Rush" ...after that "1882- Ralph Waldo Emmerson dies" Ooooh- Before that! Put the page in. We have run into things that happened the same year. They each have their own page- simply because we write the pages down first. I suppose you COULD put them both on the same page, but we've never done that- on occasion we've found out the month they happened and put them in order of what month.

Bug's entry- "1752- Ben Franklin conducts his electricity experiment" in the notebook after "1743- Thomas Jefferson born" and before "1773- Boston Tea Party"
For a while the kids each had their own timeline- but I felt like they weren't getting used as often as I would have liked. The entries in them were haphazard, and occasional. I was getting frustrated- because I could see what a useful tool timelines could be. As I was discussing it with Ben (the principal does have some input around here- lol) He said he'd like the kids to start memorizing famous quotations. So we decided to put the 2 together, and learn quotes by one person for the week. And each day as we work on the quote for the day- we'll put something about that person in our timeline.

I also have Bug practice his cursive by writing the quotes down in a notebook. Here's his page of Benjamin Franklin's quotes.


I type up the quotes and hang them on the board so we can see them as we pass by all day long. Next to each quote I have an idea of what they could put in their timeline that day.