How to get the most out of your timeline

Years ago when I first started homeschooling I had a history co-op with another family. One day the mom showed me the cool new timeline she’d gotten for her history lessons. I loved it, it was amazing and in particular, it had a placement guide. Remember this, because it’s going to be relevant to my next story and to my history timeline tips.

Don’t miss the coupon and giveaway at the bottom of the post

(this post is sponsored by Homeschool in the Woods, they have awesome products that I’ve bought, a lot of, I actually bought most of them before, also I have a few affiliate links in here)

My past timelines mistakes

I love timelines. I love to look at them and study them. As a result, I always try to use timelines.

I’m a visual person, and they help me figure out how it all works together.

I figured it might be helpful for you to see some of my past timelines, so you can see just why I like their products.

The Fabric Timeline

My first timeline was awesome. I made a fabric timeline (just to warn you that is an OLDER post, and I need to update it a little). I still really like it, and I went through and I printed the timeline figures on card stock, I colored a few of them that I really liked.

Figured out that was going to take way too much time, and did not color all of them.

I spent hours cutting them all out while watching TV.

Then I ran it all through a laminator and put velcro dots on the back.

I stored my figures in mini manila envelopes.

The problem? I couldn’t keep it from year to year, so I had to remove the figures from the previous year, so we didn’t have a continuous record of history.

Timeline 2: my random invention

For our last round of history, I basically wrote an entire history curriculum because I knew it was our last time covering history, and so I wanted to make sure we covered all of the people I particularly wanted the kids to remember and know about.

Because of this I used a timeline I invented myself. HOWEVER, I didn’t allow enough space for all of the figures, and as a result some of the pages had so many people and figures on it you can’t see everything because the figures were so bunched up.

That’s my version up above, and you can see how crowded it is. My kids’ timelines were even more crowded because of how they placed their figures to start.

If I’d known about the Ultimate Timleine Guide, I would have picked it up.

What is the Ultimate Timeline Guide?

The Ultimate Timeline Guide has a lot in it.

There are the timeline figures I talked about earlier, and the great thing about these timeline figures, they are curriculum agnostic.

I have used their timeline figures with two different history curriculums. First with Mystery of History, and also with their own curriculum (see my review of the Greek time traveler). In both of my timelines I’ve used the figures without text (the text figures have a short summary of the person or event).

There are three add-on paks, the first two include figures from the 20th and 21st century, including the recent pandemic! The third add-on paks has some more history figures (including such people as Cosimo de Medici).

But these last two are the items I really want, and you can buy them separate, but it’s a better deal if you don’t have them all.

First the printable timeline. They were smart enough to realize the timeline doesn’t have to be one size fits all. Some time periods have more going on than others. When you get to the Civil War time frame they slow the pace way down.

Going back to my friend at the beginning. Back then the only way you could get the timeline was by ordering the printed timeline notebook. It was GORGEOUS, but it was also a bit more expensive than I wanted to pay at the time for my three young kids.

That and I’m kinda terrible about losing things, and I was convinced I would lose it.

I love the download and print option that’s now available.

Next that printable placement guide is amazing.

As I mentioned, with my homemade timeline I ran into the problem of spacing, and I could probably run into the same problem with this, but the placement guide lets me know just where to put everything.

That is SO HELPFUL.

Now to the promised history timeline tips. I’ll stop telling you why I love this timeline, and get to why you came here.

History Timeline Tips

First history timeline tip:

Get a binding machine. I LOVE my binding machine, I wrote an entire post on the wonders of my binding machine.

Laminate your front and back covers. They will last longer.

I like the binding machine because it stands up better than most notebooks.

Second history timeline tip:

Get colored cardstock for the pages.

Look at the relative size of the different eras.

I chose yellow, pink, red, and orange. The ancient time was from 5000 BC-25 AD, Creation to Christ and it’s on yellow. It’s a sizable chunk of pages, but not as many as you might expect. The next time period goes through 1450, roughly the end of the Middle Ages. It’s another sizable chunk, probably about the same size as the last time period, and it’s printed on pink.

Then, so small that you can barely see it are the red pages, they go to about 1640, more or less the English Civil War and the start of colonization. About 200 years of history on 10 pages, 5 pages when printed front and back. But they’re action-packed pages.

The final section, the orange section goes to 2020. There are pages to print beyond it, but I don’t really cover that in my history lessons, that is more of modern history.

This can give you an indication of how much more history we know. The same number of events happened 5000 years ago, but we don’t think as many of them are as important as we once did.

Only use what you need

There are thousands of possible figures to place. But, you are not going to learn about every single event in history.

That’s the beauty of homeschooling, you can go as in-depth as you want or stay as shallow as you want.

I went fairly in-depth with my kids this last time around. Our history lessons went pretty deep into things like the French Revolution, and things I felt were relevant to how the world works now.

But, I still didn’t cover everything. I took a semester-long course on the French Revolution in college. I did not teach my kids everything I learned, even if it’s fascinating.

So, while the 1780s and 1790s could have 50 figures on them between those two pages, I’m only going to put on about 20 figures.

And I might not follow the placement guide for a few of them. A few of the figures I’d like to place at different times (when you have something that happens over an era, there are many possibilities on a timeline for how to place it).

Do your timeline prep early

Since you’re not using ALL of the figures, and because the figures are on a lot of different pages (the one weakness of the product to my mind, I wish the figures were organized a little differently).

I would recommend printing them out at the beginning of the year, then roughly cutting out the figures you’ll need for each month and storing them in envelopes to glue into your timelines (crazy Ticia would probably glue them onto a page, and make photo copies of the ones I want for my kids to cut out themselves, but I’m weird and obsessive like that).

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I also highly recommend their file folder games.

Y’all those Time Traveler packs are AWESOME (check them out). I’ve got a good number of them.

What history timeline tips would you add?

Homeschool in the Woods has a whole post on history timeline tips.