|
|
|
History has long formed the backbone of our homeschooling studies, along with literature. Beyond the books--the best historical fiction along with nonfiction spines worth reading--we have also used timelines and maps. This section is devoted to such history and geography "extras."
MapsI love maps. My son Ben loves maps. Maybe it's a visual learning style? Whatever. I can't do history without maps. Our first map acquisitions, early in our homeschooling journey, were a laminated world wall map and a laminated United States wall map, both from National Geographic. We use these all the time. I move them around, because that seems to stimulate interest. Our dining room table is covered in clear plastic, and often one or the other of these maps is under the plastic. We all pay attention to the map during meals, dull moments between math problems, between turns at games. The kids--and adults--notice things. We learn a lot of geography just having the map handy.
We also have a World/USA Mark-It Map, sold by Sonlight. This is an unlabeled map with the world on one side, the United States on the other. Ours hangs in the dining room, where most of our table schooling takes place (as opposed to the reading, which happens on the living room futon). I have it hung with Velcro strips so it's easy to flip from one side to the other. The kids enjoy marking places we study. They also enjoy erasing places they've memorized. You can do more than just mark Mark-It Maps. Once I used small pictures of book covers, stuck them to the map with Removable Glue Stick, and had the kids mark where each book took place. Click the thumbnails below to get a better look at some incarnations of our Mark-It Map. For more on using and storing Mark-It Maps, see Paula's Archives Map Display page.
We also own a globe and several atlases. The atlases we use are the Rand McNally Answer Atlas, the Rand McNally Historical Atlas of the World, and the Rand McNally Historical Atlas of the United States. These are inexpensive but I find them adequate to the job. Historical atlases are really handy to have, and I can't imagine trying to do much map work while studying history without one. Speaking of map work, aside from the large Mark-It Map on the wall, we also use desk sized reproducible outline maps. My favorite source for these is Uncle Josh's Outline Map Book; this resource is also available on CD-ROM. The maps are very clean and nice and there is a wide variety included. For ideas on how to use outline maps, I like The Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide by Maggie Hogan and Cindy Wiggers. This thick resource book includes a number of outline maps, ideas for using them, a scope and sequence for teaching geography in grades K to 12, ways to teach geography across the curriculum, as well as timeline figures and ideas for using timelines. This book--as well as Uncle Josh's Outline Map Book, the Answer Atlas, other atlases, and Mark-It Maps--is available from Geography Matters. New to us in the fall of 2004 is the full set of world history blackline maps on CD-ROM from Knowledge Quest. These include maps from ancient history through the present, both labelled and unlabeled, as well as labelling assignments to match each map. On the CD, they are in PDF formal and print out very nicely indeed. To spice up our map work we have recently begun making overlay maps. Permanent labels are added to a paper outline map and changing boundaries drawn with Sharpies on a write-on overhead transparency that lies on top of the paper map. These are easy to do but look rather cool for the effort. Pictured below is Aimée's overlay map of the Byzantine Empire. The paper map (left) shows the various barbarian tribes and a few major cities; the overlay (right) shows the Byzantine Empire at two different times. We might add another overlay with the much diminished boundaries of the Byzantine Empire later on.
I mentioned that my son Ben also loves maps. Some months ago I enrolled him, on a whim, in Highlights Which Way USA puzzle and map program. Every six weeks or so he got two state maps and coordinating puzzle books. After the first few, he paid little attention to the puzzle books but he really liked the maps and now has the entire collection of state maps. The day he got the last two maps, he arranged all 50 folded maps into the shape of the United States.
A number of years ago Aimée got the Highlights Top Secret Adventures kits, which cover different countries of the world in a similar fashion (although without the maps!). She liked that very much. TimelinesHomeschoolers are serious about timelines. There are thousands of ways to create timelines and plenty of ready-made timelines and timeline figures to purchase. I like my children to have a sense of what happened when, but we have struggled with traditional timelines. Sonlight sells a book timeline and includes figures in each Sonlight Basic set, but I've always preferred the visual quality of a wall timeline. For a couple years we had two timelines on our walls, one really long one for the world and one shorter one for the United States. We used Sonlight timeline figures, figures from the Ultimate Geography and Timeline Guide mentioned above, and pens and pencils to write in items. I made them out of newsprint end rolls, readily available cheaply from many printers.
I found, however, that no one paid much attention to the timelines. They just weren't making much of an impression. No one noticed when I took them down. Instead of timelines, I now make small cards with significant events and people on them. Periodically I have the kids lay out the cards in order. One could play a game like the commercial game Chronology with these homemade cards. I find the kids are more involved in this kind of activity--they enjoy the challenge--and they pay better attention to this than they ever did to the timelines. For more timeline ideas, see Paula's Archives timeline page. Some resources for constructing a timeline, whether a wall timeline, book timeline, or set of cards, include: Usborne Timelines of World History The Usborne Book of World History Dates Another resource I'm just beginning to explore is the software Easy Timeline Creator. With this tool I can make timelines sized to slip under the plastic on the dining room table. I made one as soon as the software arrived, and my children all pored over it, so I think this will be an effective approach. The software is easy enough to use that my kids can make their own timelines, which sounded like fun to them, so I'm thinking it was money well spent, assuming the novelty doesn't wear off. One more timeline approach I tried uses the Veritas Press history flashcards. The cards are printed on 5" x 7" cardstock and have nice artwork on them. I clipped them to a string as we covered each one; the string hung in our dining room, where it got looked at frequently enough. This was our first experience with Veritas Press cards. The boys did seem to pay attention to them and enjoy looking at them while we play the accompanying tape (which has a song listing the cards in order). Click the thumbnails below to see our strung-up VP cards.
After we were done with ancient history and the VP card timeline, I put each in a page protector in a binder to keep for the next time. We decided not to continue with the cards after our year of ancient history; for the roughly $30, it just did not seem worth it. |
