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Every homeschooler should have a timeline! A timeline lets you SEE the flow of history, lets you record and remember the people and events you've studied and also makes a nice "portfolio" of years worth of work.

We have created timeline materials to help you construct your own timeline and provide ideas and teaching tips at the bottom of this page. Follow the instructions below. *All downloads on this page require Adobe Acrobat Reader (free).

Print out our exclusive timeline cover and slip it underneath the plastic protector on the cover of a 3-ring notebook. The timeline "spine" is a graphic you can slip down the spine of your notebook for easy reference. Click to download a cover for either a girl or a boy.

Boy's Timeline Cover

Girl's Timeline Cover

Timeline Spine

The next step is to print out the numbered timeline pages provided below and put them into your notebook. You will need a total of 100 hole punched papers for a complete timeline.

B.C. Timeline Pages
30 pages:
(4100 B.C. - 0 B.C.)
The Ancient World
The Classical World

A.D. Timeline Pages
70 pages:
(0 A.D. - 2010 A.D.)
The Classical World
Early Middle Ages
Middle Ages
Renaissance
Trade & Empire
Revolution and Independence
Unification and Colonization
The World at War
The Modern World

Blank Timeline Page (Use this page to print out extras or to make smaller timeline portions. You will have to fill in dates by hand).

Now all you do is fill it up! You can print out blank pages as needed (if you fill up a page of specific dates, you can just have an extra page with the same dates inserted).

We put just a little bit of everything into our timelines (you can see a sample page to the left). When we read a book set in a certain time period, we paste in a picture of the book cover. We also Google images, write in text or create our own pictures right on the pages for whatever we're studying.

Our son likes to flip through his timeline and look at all of the "historical" books he's read. It's not only fills him with a sense of accomplishment, but he's getting a great review of his studies without even realizing it.

COMING SOON (or eventually, hahah): Timeline figures for you to print out!
If you liked these printables, please check out our other printables!

Some Other Timeline Ideas:

• Take the pages out of your notebook and line them up on the floor to really see how time and events have progressed -stretch it across the room and down the hall! This really gives kids an idea of how long ago something happened.
• Quiz each other with questions like, "What books did we read set in Medieval times?" "Who do you think is on the same page as Mark Twain?"
• Enter in pictures of your family members on their birth dates
• Examine your timeline and find connections that you might not have seen otherwise.

Here are some more resources for timelines:

Timeline Figure Resources:

Geography Matters
Go to their history and timeline materials to see the timeline figure CD's. They have free samples you can take a look at. Some of their images look like "clip art".

Google
Use Google images to find a picture of a book cover or person.
History Through the Ages
Homeschool Through the Woods sells several timeline figure packages. They provide "detailed" professional (very attractive!) looking black and white drawings. They also offer a CD where you can print off pictures from all of the sets at whatever size you need - not just small for your timeline.

Historical Timeline Figures
These are "cartoony" black and white line drawings. You can see the entire listing of names and events listed for their sets (which is really nice to be able to do).

Images of American Political History
A collection of over 500 public domain images.

Konos History Heroes
Colorful and "fun" characters for your timeline. Each set of history characters also has an activities book you can buy separately (looks like fun)!

Portrait Gallery of Historical Figures
An alphabetical listing of people in history. Click on a name and you are taken to a page with a portrait. You can shrink the portraits down for your timeline pages.

****We also may be providing timeline figures to go with our American History Year One curriculum.*****

Online Timeline Resources
(Use these to get ideas from or to guide you in creating your own.)

Alterna Time
A collection of timeline links for lots of different subjects (not just "history").

Bible Timeline
It's just text, but useful!

HyperHistory
A gigantic online, clickable timeline (with some maps too!). Wow, this thing isn't the prettiest timeline I've ever seen but it's still pretty neat.

For LOCAL Los Banos history check out our Los Banos, CA history section.