One of the coolest things you can take advantage of as a homeschooler is using timeline. It can be added to every year or a fresh one made. If you add to it every year, it becomes this wonderful living history project that will both cement learning and inspire learning. Discoveries/landmarks in science and family history are great additions to any time line.

Each student could have their own timeline or the whole family might share one. The benefit of each student having one is that your children may be studying different time periods and if they are making their own timeline figures it will be entirely their own creation, instead of a shared project. Each student's timeline would be a cool keepsake, too.

The whole family may decide to have one! It is possible to have a family time line and each student to have their own. What ever your family decides, it will be a project you all will benefit from and enjoy.

Styles of timelines can be mounted to the wall like a hallway, a folding accordian style, or as pages in a binder that you flip through. The binder style is more difficult to grasp the layout as it is not laid out in a linear fashion. If you want to use butcher paper, keep in mind that it may roll up on the edges. There is always the option to laminate it before you add the time line figures and that may help with the rolling edges. Another option is to tape pages together end to end on the back (with strong tape such as packing tape). You may opt for cardstock for a more sturdy project, which I recommend. The heavier, the better. The benefits of this page to page style is that it can be added to if need be on the end, can be folded, can be mounted on the wall, and is small enough to go into a folder or on a shelf.

Your student may create their own artwork for timeline figures, do no art and just write what happened when or use premade artwork for it. Many families enjoy the Homeschool In The Woods products for premade figures and you can reproduce them to save big money. Then all your figures "match" if that is important or you have a child who is not comfortable with their craft skills. I have included some links for free or nearly free timeline figures here below.

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/ClassicalEducation4Me/9726/

http://www.squidoo.com/homeschooltimelines

http://www.abookintime.com/timelines.html

http://isaiah5413.blogspot.com/2007/01/free-or-almost-free-time-line-figures.html

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?p=296481

(A topic thread here gives an address to a yahoogroup with 850+ members that share timeline help. I am a member myself.)

http://www.angelfire.com/or/mtdewbydo/timelines.html

http://www.biblioplan.net/timeline.htm

http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/socialsciences_ancientcivilizations.htm