History_Time

Timelines orient us in history, and once you see the value of that orientation, there is a temptation to add more and more events to the timeline.

But the more events you add, the less useful the timeline becomes as a visual orientation. The sense of clutter can overwhelm the sense of time.

So just 36 biographies here.

For small children, and even for older ones, the difficulty with history is learning it always in bits and pieces that are adrift from each other. This time line introduces history through the eyes of just 36 characters who take a child through the full sweep of history from creation to the 20th century, covering the background of the major American holidays, covering most continents, and touching a variety of achievements in science, literacy, and holiness, as well as civic leadership.

If a young child learns these names, every further historical endeavor will involve people who live between two of these, who live in a country near one of them, and whose achievements complement or contrast with them. Thus he will always be able to orient himself in the study of history. He can even write other names on his timeline.

The provided text is brief, and it is expected that the family will use the library. This also means that an older child can use the same list of names and write reports on each person or his period in history, using the dividers to organize his work. Thus the family can study together.

The mural (uncolored) is about 4.5 inches by 7 feet with 18 Panels. 40 Cards (5.5" x 8.5") and 40 dividers (8.5" x 11") have the same images as the mural. With larger images, a younger child can color more easily, and the cards can be spread on the table and sorted by date, country, or type of achievement. Dates are not written on cards allowing them to be used for memory work.

Dividers allow an older child to organize his work. The value of this file is not merely the work of one year, but the intent is that over the next few years, the student will continue to file material in the same notebook. In this way, he will feel, under his hands, that American history is just the last 500 years, that ancient civilizations flourished in sequence, not all at once, and that medieval history has a millennium to itself. Furthermore, he will be aware of how historical events in non-western cultures are contemporary with specific events in western culture.

All this will help him to develop a sense of continuity and of the whole.