Saturday, July 16, 2011

Notebook Timelines Revisited

We enjoy using a timeline, but they can be time and labor intensive. Our very first timeline was the Kono's Wall Timeline. It sets up in a triangular pyramid fashion and eats up a lot of wall space. Don't ever mention how many times I asked Mr S to move the silly thing either. In fact, the last time I said, "I really think we need to move the timeline.." the poor man nearly cried.

Eventually we gave up our wall space for the timeline for a Word Wall; an accumulation of dolch & site words young readers knew as soon as they saw them. Which left us with notebook timelines.

Morgan really enjoyed them because it allowed him a lot of drawing time and honestly the process wasn't long or complicated. Over time, though, we became slack about adding things to the notebook and only remembered to do so on occasion.

So, imagine our delight to know that Winter Promise also uses a notebook timeline! They use a slightly different concept which allows the notebook to be set up in a more organized manner than ours was. This was a big deal, because I'd been trying, for some time, to figure out how to better organize the timeline we were creating.

The Winter Promise Timeline {which could honestly be used with any curriculum} is set up with a two page spread that spans various time frames. In the above photo it covers 100 AD - 1100 AD. Then you file notebooking pages, lapbook components, and other items you might have to remember your studies behind the appropriate pages.

Last week we studied numerous explorers so we cut out pictures of them from our Homeschool In The Woods timeline pieces and pasted them on to the appropriate timeline page. The trick here is reminding your children to keep things neat and tidy. Not because I'm a neat freak, but because they'll be using this book for years to come and you'll want to leave enough space on the pages to add more timeline pieces!

Then behind that page we slipped in a few notebooking pages. This page about columbus has a few fun mini books from a Christopher Columbus lapbook we own, but the reverse side of the paper was a simple notebooking page from homeschool share. I chose to have the kids use the minit books so they'd have record of a bit more information. I think you'll also be shocked to know who colored Columbus blue and who colored the King & Queen "normal".  We also filed some information about Leif Ericcson & explorers in general, all behind the correct pages.

This is not a small notebooking project, check out the size of the notebook and we've hardly begun with it! I only purchased one set of these timeline pages this year despite having two children. This was one of those "on purpose" type choices, but I think next year I'll order a second set of the pages for Jayden. For now, they are content to share and we work on all our things together both contributing information to the final projects. In fact they do quite well deciding between themselves who will cover which mini books or notebooking pages and bouncing information off of each other. I'm quite impressed by it.

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