We've used these beautiful flash cards for the past two years, and they are a great resource for developing a history timeline in your brain. There are a total of 160 historical people, places, and events from early recorded history to modern America. Learning history chronologically has proven invaluable in the lives of many children. By memorizing names, dates, places and events, children gain a valuable tool for understanding how this world has been shaped and influenced. My long-term goal is that my children (as they advance in school) will be able to routinely contextualize more in depth historical studies. Knowing a chronological sequence or time line of history is a crucial part of anyone’s education.
However, today I thought it would be fun to let you know all the 'things' we do with these timeline cards. I don't buy many textbooks each year. Rather, I take what we have and use that to educate my children. Here are 10 Learning Activities we do with the Veritas Press Timeline Cards.
1. Read. Just reading the information to my children gives them more of a background and understanding of history than most people have today.
2. Memorize. My children have all 160 cards memorized in order. It's rather impressive, I must say.
3. Study the Famous Artwork and/or Maps. Each card has famous artwork, or a map, on the front. We study the artist and their work. If its a map from ancient times, we compare the land and boundaries to a map of today.
4. Related Resources. On the back of each card there's additional reading listed. The resources are worth exploring.
5. Handwriting Exercises. I give my children lined paper and have them practice their penmanship by copying the information.
6. Presentation/Report Material. Any card can be built on. My daughter recently gave a presentation on Pocahontas. We started with the Jamestown is Founded in Virginia card.
7. Individual Artwork. My children have drawn their own pictures to go with the cards.
8. Wikipedia Links. For years, my husband and I have loved typing a subject into Wikipedia, and then following the links to see what else we can learn. Here you can see where I typed in Alexander the Great. In the first paragraph alone, there are 11 additional topics we could explore.
Games. Here are two games we play with our cards.
9. Shuffle and mix up the cards so that they are out of order. We see how long it takes to rearrange them chronologically.
10. Guess Which Card. One child will make up 4 or 5 clues using the facts on a card. Then s/he will try to get the other child to guess which card the clues came from.
UPDATED WITH NEW CARDS AND NEW ACTIVITIES - JANUARY 22, 2013
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