No matter what history program you use, creating a timeline for students to see, touch, and use can be very beneficial. Home School in the Woods sent us the Timeline Trio to try out for our latest review. Here, you’ll get a sneak peek into what you can expect to find when you receive the set. The beauty of this collection of products is that it can be used year after year, no matter what time period in history that you may be studying!
Home School in the Woods TIMELINE TRIO
We received the physical copies of each item pictured above, which is what makes up the Timeline Trio. This includes physical copies of the History Through the Ages Collection of Historical Timeline Figures (on CDs), “Record of Time” timeline notebook, and a soft cover book called “Suggested Placement Guide.”
The HISTORY Through the Ages RECORD OF TIME timeline notebook is a high quality binder with a glossy finish, meant to hold up over several years of use. It comes with a huge packet of “Record of Time” pages, which goes right into the binding. It is designed to record chronological history from 5000BC to the present.
In total, there are 145 card stock pages with the dates printed on there, along with lines for ease of writing notes. Additionally, in the back, there is a large section of maps, including ancient places like China, Egypt, and Greece, and current ones of various places in the world, including a political and physical map of the United States. The only writing on these maps is to label the main location, so you can use these to work on labeling locations with your student during map work time in your studies.
The disc set of Historical Timeline Figures includes over 1,260 black and white people, places, and events on 2 CDs. There are versions of these with text and without text, so it’s easy to customize these to your needs. Both versions still include the name and date, but the ones without any other description would be great for assigning a student to write their own brief summary in the timeline.
They are also offered in 2 sizes to print off: wall size and notebook size.
CD 1 has PDF pages of all of the timeline sets in the HISTORY Through the Ages series. That covers Creation to Christ, Resurrection to Revolution, Napoleon to Now, and America’s History. This CD has the PDF pages for each size, as well as some new Bonus Figures never offered before in previous editions.
CD 2 is a huge gallery of GIFs of the 1,260+ timeline images. You can browse these by name, in chronological order, or by category. No matter what period of history you are studying, you’re sure to find some timeline figures to place in your very own Record of Time notebook.
We also received the Suggested Placement Guide, which I’ll describe a bit more below.
My kids just finished up a program that went into detail with a lot of our Founding Fathers and American History. The beauty of this Timeline Trio is that whether you are using their Time Travelers American History program or any other history program under the sun, you’ll be able to find a good use for the figures and timeline notebook. The list of figures is so extensive, and the information included is top notch.
I love that the Record of Time is a horizontal binder that is easy to use. It allows my kids to actually SEE when things happened in relation to other events or the birth or death of important people.
For our purposes this summer, I’m getting my kids to review a lot of what they have learned. I actually went to the CD with GIF files and chose each timeline figure that I wanted to include, created a Google Doc with them, and printed out on just a few sheets the ones I wanted.
I gave the kids the print outs and had them cut them out. Next, I instructed them to look in the Suggested Placement Guide to see where they should probably glue in the specific figures we were using. My kids liked that in the guide, it listed everything by year (which corresponds to the year pages in the notebook on the Record of Time pages), by name, and with a little mini picture that looked exactly like the ones they were using. It made it easy to spot their figures and see where to put them on their own timeline.
In a matter of minutes, my kids placed over a dozen figures over the span of a couple of pages. As we did this, I had the kids read the written descriptions on each figure as a refresher as to who and what they had already learned about in their history lessons.
Moving forward, I think I’ll have my kids add timeline figures every couple of chapters in our new history program we’re using this year. It takes something seemingly abstract like ancient times (which we’ll be studying this upcoming school year) and puts it down in black and white so they can see exactly how history progressed. This is something I never remember doing when I was growing up, and I still have confusion and fuzziness when trying to remember when things happened, especially things that were happening simultaneously in different cultures or parts of the world.
The Suggested Placement Guide is 72 pages long and has a great index in the back if you’ve printed off a specific figure and need to quickly find its location for the timeline.
I am quite impressed with the set. I’ve purchased timelines before, but they were flimsy and I was afraid to mess with them after a few uses because they started to fall apart or didn’t have enough room for me to place the information I wanted to.
Home School in the Woods has provided an excellent solution here with the Timeline Trio. Not only is the Record of Time notebook portable, durable, and of great quality, but it really makes history make more sense to my kids. Let’s be honest, it’s making it make more sense for me, too!
The Historical Timeline Figures Collection CD provides me with a vast resource of drawings, dates, names, and information on pretty much anything in history you can imagine! It’s easy to pick and choose what to print and use for our needs.
The Suggested Placement Guide is a resource that makes it quick and simple to place our chosen figures on our timeline in a way that makes sense and leaves room for all of the notes and figures that we could possibly need throughout our homeschooling years.
I love that these 3 resources can be used again and again. We just placed a bunch of US History figures, and now we’re moving on to world history, beginning with the ancients. No big deal, it is ALL included in this enormous timeline. We can simply place the figures we learn about on their appropriate pages as we go along. When we move on to yet another type of history, we can just move on to THOSE pages and place figures.
When my older kids graduate and I’m still left with my younger ones homeschooling, we will still be able to make great use out of the timeline! They will have the benefit of seeing what has already been placed, and there will still be room to add more information on people, places, and events that held significant importance during whatever time period they are studying.
We have reviewed other Home School in the Woods products before. Check out my reviews for Renaissance & Reformation, US Elections, and Ancient Egypt. They are now offering A-La-Carte Projects, which are perfect for families that like to take the unit study approach. This is a brand new offering from them, and would be an inexpensive way to try out what Home School in the Woods has to offer!
To see other products that the Crew has reviewed recently, such as Activity-Paks and Lap-Paks, click the banner below.