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Monday, October 22, 2012

Our Timeline

Part of an early Classical Education is memorization.  Lots of memorization.  I love it.  And believe it or not, the kids do too.  They beam with pride when they are able to recall the Classifications of Living Things or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Much of the facts are put to song.  And let's face it ... when you have a song memorized, it just sticks with you.  Pretty much forever.  One of our most favorite things to memorize is The Timeline.  It's a song of 161 world events beginning with Creation and ending with present day.  The song is over 13 minutes long.  And yes absolutely, the kids are indeed memorizing it, and enjoying every bit of it.  The song has a lot of hand motions (many of them are derivatives of ASL), and Sunshine has latched onto them as much as the older 2!

In order for the kids to have a visual for The Timeline (so they could see how the different events relate to each other), I created our Homeschool Room Timeline.  It was simple and cheap enough to put together, although a little time-consuming.  It's made from that poster/presentation foam board stuff (the one that has 2 flaps that fold in).  I used three of the flaps (purely a guess based on how much space I had on the wall), lined them up, and taped them together on the back.  And I then created The Timeline based on the events we're memorizing.  I attached it to the wall above the kids' desks in our Homeschool Room.  There's enough room that I can add more if/when the time comes.  There were a few spots where I wish I had given myself more room, especially around the 1800's!  It's not perfect or professional, but it works for our purposes :-)  If you don't have a designated Homeschool Room, a Timeline like this could easily be made to fold up and pull out when being used.




To help with the other facts we are learning each week, I'm using this magnetic/dry erase board from Ikea.  I asked DH to hang it on the wall so that I could pull it down to change it each week - I really like how it works for us.  I don't know if the kids are referring to it all that much, but I am finding it very helpful.  I'm also eventually planning on hanging some of that wire stuff from Ikea to hang out Timeline cards and Science cards (with clothespins) as more visuals.



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8 comments:

  1. If I had a room like that with all the stuff you have created to make it visual and inviting and all that, I JUST might be able to homeschool afterall. :)

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  2. I'm planning to do the same thing with wire for our timeline/science cards. I'm going to get a huge world map for the dinning room and then hang it under that.

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  3. LOOOOVE the timeline! That is soo right up my alley! :) Do you happen to have a list of all the dates you included or did you make this as you studied different events?

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  4. Stumbled across your blog from I Heart Organizing. Wanted to say I love your timeline idea. This is our first year to participate in Classical Conversations. My kids are loving the Timeline song so I think they would really like a visual like this. Thanks for posting!

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  5. Can you help me with how you color coded it, and how you measured the time out? I have been wanting to make one and am getting all perfectionistic and can't commit to ink! I like how yours is a manageable size. Thanks so much. By the way, I love your blog! Welcome to homeschooling, CC and the world of cleft surgeries! I birthed two cleft babies and love to see adoption stories of cleft babies. We have done CC for three years and love it and have homeschooled for 8 years! Blessings, Stephanie.

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    1. Hi Stephanie! Thank you so much for your comment, it's nice to "meet" another cleft/homeschooling/CC mama! I tried to send you an email, but I couldn't find an email address attached to your blogger account, I'm sorry! Our timeline isn't actually color-coded, I just wanted to make it colorful and chose to use different-colored markers :) And to be perfectly honest, I didn't really measure the timeline out ahead of time. Ha! That goes against my Type A personality, but thinking of doing the math to measure it all out was a little overwhelming. I used less space for the earlier times, and then spread out the space as I went along. It just ended up working out well in the end!

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  6. Just beautiful! We are gearing up for our second year of CC and I was wanting something just like this for our timeline. Thanks for posting!

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  7. Did you color code the timeline consistently based on pre-determined criteria? For example, did you use 'green' to document certain type of events, places, or people.

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