Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Homeschool History Timeline

Home School in the Woods

Homeschool Review Crew

Do you enjoy history in your homeschool?  What about having a homeschool history timeline?  We do many different things for history but mostly it’s just reading a lot of good books about history and the people of the past. 

That’s why I love the Printable “Essential Timeline Library” from Home School in the Woods.  This is the perfect way to create a homeschool history timeline in your own homeschool, your way.  It helps you see where people were in relation to each other, like a who lived when for your eyes and brain.  We received the download as part of a review through the Homeschool Review Crew. 

We’ve previously spent time with Home School in the Woods in our homeschool and love their products.  They’re made with quality and are easy to use.  Even for tech-challenged me, they’re easily navigated!

About the Product

Home School in the Woods offers a variety of resources to help make homeschooling easier for you.  You can travel back to the Civil War, and Medieval times, go to Egypt, or simply learn American history.  With so many times and places to choose from it’s hard to know where to start. 

We had the pleasure of using the homeschool history timeline figures and cannot stop with them. Seriously.  I think my kids would do history every single day of the week if I let them.  Our current obsessions vary though so you’ll have to bear with us as we chat different time periods at the same time.

Some Specifics

There are 1444 timeline figures that cover the course of history.  There are so many different pieces of this product!  You get each figure as the size needed for the timeline, the timeline itself, plus each figure as a full page size figure.  But that’s not all.  There are also three add-on packs.  A download with a suggested placement guide for the figures. 

Oh, and did I mention that there is so much helpful information?  That’s what I needed at first.  It tells you how to use the product, how to download it, etc.  It’s always helpful to start with that. 

The timeline figures come together in one spot.  Before this was offered on a CD but now it’s a download.  They are sorted into different sections.  They are sorted out by time period in history.  Those sections are Creation to Christ, Resurrection to Reformation, Napoleon to Now, and America, plus a Bonus collection.  

Another fun part of the timeline is that you can print your figures out with a paragraph about them or without that.  So not only can you choose your size but you can also choose whether you want the words or not.  I think the words are great for the younger set while it’s great to allow the older ages to make their own writings to go with the figures. 

Use

The timeline is easy to use.  It’s a series of downloads.  They are zipped files so you do have to extract them before you can use them.  But there is a tutorial on their site so don’t worry if you’ve never done that before.  

My husband and I are both history buffs.  So it stood to reason that our children would love history too.  After all, they’re immersed in it from birth as we do reenactments for two time periods.  However, what I didn’t count on was my children being interested in and devouring all kinds of books on different time periods.  I always thought we’d all study the same things in history and it would be so fun. 

While we do do some of that, a lot of what they study and learn is independent.  This is where the homeschool history timeline figures come in.  

How We are Using 

Each of my children has their own timeline notebook.  I’ve printed off some pages and they work on filling them in with the figures that they have read about.  

For instance, my oldest has been into Ancient times.  Currently, that’s ancient Egypt.  So off to the ancients within the figures, I go and I print them off.  Then she finds books and sources about each one so that she can write a page or paragraph about each one.  On her timeline goes the figure and into a notebook goes the notebook-size figure plus her paper on them.  She’s in charge of keeping everything organized according to dates and turning in a full notebook at the end of the year. 

I love that this review has come right as we start our new school year so that we have the entire year to make our notebooks and play with our homeschool history timeline.  I do feel that some of the kids are going to need to move around and add pages to their timelines as they realize that a whole period of time existed between their favorite ages.  

Our Thoughts 

We absolutely love Home School in the Woods and its products.  This is not the first piece that we’ve used and I’m sure it won’t be the last.  I love that they have a variety of curriculum pieces from Kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade.  It truly makes it something that you can do together as a family.  And something you can use over and over!

Want to see the difference in wall versus notebook size? 

This set makes me wish we had a wall that we could put the timeline figures on!  Of course, our house is super small and any walls we have are already covered with bookshelves and pictures, etc.  So instead we settle for a timeline notebook.  Each of my children has their own timeline notebook to fill with the figures they want to study.  This gives them freedom over their own education. 

I love allowing my children to choose what they want to study.  But more than that I want to encourage them to dig in and truly know the subjects that they are studying.  I find that if they are truly interested they will understand and learn much more than if I am just telling them facts about history. 

So now you know what my kids are doing on their own. 

As a family, we’re also doing a bit more with the figures. For our family, we are starting with Creation and working our way through all the figures.  This way everyone gets a chance to read about and learn about each of them.  Together as a family, we are making one notebook with a timeline that we are putting the figures on.  For the family notebook, I am using the small timeline figures with the paragraph about them.  

My younger children are using the timeline and small figures.  They love to cut them out and paste them onto their timeline.  Something else they like to do, my older kids too, is to color in the figures.  We try to look up images online to show them what clothing etc would have looked like in the era they lived so that they get them as accurate as possible.  That doesn’t mean much for the three-year-old though as she often colors hers pink and purple which are her current favorite colors.

My older children are using the full-page figures and on the back or the next page, they are writing their own write-up on the figure in history and what they contributed. 

Extras

There are lots of new timeline characters.  We have used the timeline before and there are extra add-ons now that take us up closer to modern-day history.  I love these new ones.  They’re so neat and give us more to study.  Plus they’re ones that are “modern” and not ones that normally would be studied here.  

After all, who doesn’t love learning about Bob Hope!?  My husband has always loved him and I loved learning about what he did during the wars.  Plus my kids love watching his movies as well. 

Learn More

Ready to learn more about making your own homeschool history timeline?  How about learning more about all the great products that Home School in the Woods offers?  Check out members of the Crew and their reviews linked up on the main blog post on the Homeschool Review Crew blog. 

Home School in the Woods can also be found on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. 

Also, feel free to read some of our past reviews through Home School in the Woods!  We love their products as I’m sure you’ll see.  Some of the products we’ve reviewed are Renaissance and Reformation, Time Travelers WWII Study, Project Passwords: The Middle Ages, and some fun games through the A la Carte products!