Introducing timelines to preschool

I’m super excited for this lesson, it’s a great way to introduce timelines to preschoolers, and is a fun bit of homeschool history lesson for preschool. (Future Ticia here, I’m editing this post with new info, and updating pictures, so I’ll add in a few comments, from the perspective of a middle school parent now, not a preschool parent)

Argh, it’s 10:37 and my 3 year old is calling downstairs claiming she needs to go potty…..  This is why she sleeps so late in the mornings.  She doesn’t go to sleep.  She’ll be the teenager who sleeps until 5 at night.

 

Teaching timelines to preschool

Mardel had their end of the school year curriculum sale, and so I very excitedly got our science and history curriculum.  I made Jeff stop there on our way up to Great Wolf Lodge.  He was nicely tolerant, and so we’re starting it now.  So, here it is, Mystery of History*, oh my I just looked at their online store.  That was a bad idea, I think I could go broke just buying all the cool accessories.  Stay good Ticia, stay good (Future Ticia here, I did not stay good, I bought ALL the stuff, as you can see in my what you need to teach Mystery of History post).

Back on topic.  One of the things they emphasize is having a good timeline, and how God is always acting in history.  That’s actually one of the things I like about this, they point out how God acted in history, and it’s taught sequentially.

To introduce all of this I introduced my kids to the idea of a timeline.  I gathered a bunch of pictures that weren’t in scrapbooks yet, which were an odd assortment of pictures of my kids in bursts.

They happily spent quite a while sorting the pictures and fighting over which picture went where.  The part that amused me most is the boys constantly asking who was in what picture.  They don’t know who is who in the pictures either (Future Ticia here, that’s still true at 11 years old).

And if you look at the bottom picture you’ll see Superman’s first ever head wound.  You know, I could almost create a category of injuries on this blog.  Isn’t that sad?  That is one of three scars all right in the same spot.  Crazy, huh?

Part of what was amusing to me was their guesses as to what pictures went first or later.  After the timeline got too long we started grouping pictures that happened at a similar time.  So all the pictures from the camping trip were put together.  All the pictures of baby Princess were put together.

From there, as seems to be usual for my kids, they took it to a whole different level.  They each insisted they needed to take one picture and write a story about the picture.  Actually they tried to argue for every picture they declared they were in, but eventually we settled on two each.

I made up some quick lined papers on the computer, that were about the size they should be writing on, printed it off, gave them glue, and pens.  Then they were off.  Superman and Batman started off writing real letters, but as they looked at the number of lines they quickly morphed into drawing pictures and squiggly lines.  It was really quite cute, in that crazy writer sort of way.

I am so stoked about what we’re going to do this year in history, I’m sure I will be saying this a lot in different ways, but Ancient history is one of my favorite times.  So much great stuff in there, Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, crazy cultures, I can’t wait.  Okay, I’m getting all excited just thinking about what we can do…….  Mwa ha ha ha ha ha, evil mad cackle.

Changing subject quickly, before I start going too much on a tangent…

Want more timeline resources?

First check out my history board, with lots of ideas for timelines and more there.

Then check out some of these ideas:

• Resuable timeline
• Geography timeline notebook
• Clothespin timeline
• Paintstick timeline