Although I did spend an entire year on American History with my oldest child when he was very young, I’m not sure I’ll repeat this strategy with my younger kids. In her book, The Well-Trained Mind, Susan Wise Bauer talks about treating history as a four year cycle: Ancients, Middle Ages, Early Modern, and Modern history. Over the course of a 12 year education, the cycle gets repeated 3 times, going more in depth each time.

While I don’t consider myself a “classical” homeschooler by any stretch of the imagination, my oldest, who is currently in fourth grade is completing his first cycle with Story of the World: Vol. 4 – Modern History as recommended by Ms. Bauer. In the near future at least, I plan to continue this cycle. I am excited to start Ancient History again next year, because I know my younger kids who missed it the first time around are really going to enjoy it.

I don’t think that our family will ever have a year completely dedicated to American history again. However, the history of our nation is something that is important and that I want my kids to be knowledgeable about. The list of events that I created and the corresponding timeline are more helpful for me than for my kids. They help me to organize information in my own mind. As we learn about world history, we will continue to learn about American history simultaneously, and I will continue to both refer back to my timeline and list of events add to them as my knowledge grows.

If you would like your own list to refer to while you educate your children or to give your children as a study tool, below you will find a list of more than 200 important events in United States history to get you started!

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Cost: Free

Materials:

Access your free printable here:

List of Important Events in American History

Enjoy!

Related Links

Learning Activities for Kids
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Another great way to use this paper is to help kids document what they learn. I like to have my kids draw pictures of what we’ve been talking about. Then afterwards, they practice sounding things out phonetically to write a sentence to go along with their illustration. This is an example of what my first grader learned about the Taj Mahal. As part of our history learning, I have them glue what they work on into a composition book.

If your child is still working on the motor skills needed for writing, I learned a great tip from a friend. Use a yellow marker to write out what the child wants to say. Then they can practice tracing the marker with a pencil to write their dictated sentence. My daughter loves that it is her own words that she is tracing.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Early Elementary
Time Required: 1 minute
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials:
paper

Instructions:
Print out the version you desire as many times as you want:

Free Printable Illustration Paper for Kids

Lines for Young Writers – No Name Line
Lines for Young Writers – With Name Line
Wide Ruled for Older Writers – No Name Line
Wide Ruled for Older Writers – With Name Line

Enjoy!

Related Links

Charlotte Mason Learning
Reading & Writing Activities for Kids
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After about 10 minutes, I decided it would be easier to just make what I was looking for. As usual, this took a little longer than I was planning as well, but in the end, here is some free, unmarked, no-email-required, printable, lined paper for young writers (maybe kindergarten through second grade…I don’t know, we’re not there yet. When do kids transition to wide-ruled?) There are 4 different options. I made them in vertical and horizontal, because after I made it vertical, my 6 year old informed me that it would make more sense to make the paper go the other way so he could fit more words per line. Also, I decided my initial attempt had lines that were not quite big enough for him, so we’ll graduate to the smaller version eventually.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Early Elementary
Time Required: 1 minute
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials:
paper

Instructions:
Print out the version you desire as many times as you want:

Related Links

Charlotte Mason Learning
Reading & Writing Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids

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Since learning about the Charlotte Mason book of centuries, I’ve seen blank timelines sold or as part of homeschooling programs. They seem like such a great idea. However, I had small issues with everything I found available. For example, in the Book of Centuries, the pages are vertical and frequently the books are bound (like a composition book where each line represents a 5 year period). I didn’t like this for 2 reasons. First, I didn’t want there to be lined divisions, because so many of the dates in ancient history are approximate. I didn’t like the idea of putting the information on an arbitrary line when the event might only be known within 100 years or so. Second, the problem with using a bound book (which was also an issue in other online world history timelines I found) is that there is no way to lay it all out and look at it at once. The sheets being vertical also is a problem if you wanted the sheets to make one large, consecutive line on the wall.

I liked the idea of having a timeline that could be viewed all at once. Granted, this free printable would be over 30 yards if you were to lay it out and no one I know has that much space available, but by using loose-leaf paper, we can hang up sections at a time as we’re learning about them.

Another feature which I thought might be useful is to divide up the timeline by continent. How often do we learn about something and have no idea what’s happening on the other side of the planet at the same time? Was the peak of the ancient Mayan civilization before or after the construction of the Great Wall of China? I honestly don’t know, but using this timeline with little world maps denoting a section for each continent, it will be easy to go back and find out.

Now, here’s my confession. I hated history growing up. I hated all the dates and names and events we needed to memorize. I hated my textbooks and pop quizzes and exams. I hated having to take notes for so long that my hand would cramp (and I actually like taking notes). I was a good student, but of all my subjects, history was always my least favorite. As a result, I remember effectively none of the years and years of history I’ve studied, which is just embarrassing.

However, now that I’m a grown-up and no one is testing me or making me take notes, I’m finally learning to enjoy history. If I could go back and do it all over again, this blank timeline is the sort of tool I would want to put it all into context and make connections that would allow the knowledge to last in my consciousness, rather than evaporate away into nothingness as soon as humanly possible.

My kids are still too young to actually make use of this free printable timeline. Rather, this timeline is for me. I have a few years before I’ll give my oldest son his own copy to fill out over the course of his childhood. In the meantime, I’m planning to catch up. As I read to them, I’ll learn for me. If all goes according to plan, I’ll use this timeline over the next several years, retain the key points I want to remember, and my kids will never know what an idiot I currently am when it comes to world history.

If you would like your own copy, I’m including two links below. This 121 page file is large, so I recommend right-clicking and selecting “save target as” (or whatever the appropriate counterpart is on a Mac) so that you can see the download progress. The first link is a more manageable, compressed 3 MB file. However, the quality is a bit low and that would bug me. Therefore, I’m also including the full 12 MB high resolution file. Take your pick.

Blank World History Timeline – lower resolution/smaller file
Blank World History Timeline – higher resolution/larger file

The above files above have very small margins. It works well on my printer, but one reader had trouble with text getting cut off. Just in case, here is a version with smaller margins.

I’m also planning to make printable supplements to go along with this timeline. For example, if you’re studying ancient Egypt, you’ll be able to print out a sheet of small images that could be cut and glued to the timeline for events or figures like the Pyramid of Giza or King Tut along with instructions specifying where I would place them on the timeline. This is a work in progress, but so far, these posts include some such timeline printables:

• 20 Historical Figures Worth Knowing
• Ancient Mesopotamian Historical Figure Cards
• Ancient Egyptian Historical Figure Cards
• Ancient Egyptian Monument Cards
• Ancient Greece Historical Figure Cards

To stay up-to-date with my ever-growing list of free printables, sign up for my newsletter.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes (plus an extra 45 minutes if you decide to put each sheet in a page protector as I did)
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $5 in used supplies (the cost of a binder plus paper/ink for 121 pages. I also decided to put each sheet in it’s own page protector which cost about $10 extra, but isn’t necessary by any means.)

Materials:

• Printed blank world history timeline (See link above. Make sure to right-click/save-as if you want to save it to your computer. If you just open it to print it, be patient as it may take a minute or two to load completely.)
• 3 Ring Binder (At least a 2″ binder if you use sheet protectors. 1″ is big enough if not.)
• Sheet protectors (optional, but helpful if you think you’ll ever want to hang parts of it on the wall.)

Supplies & Tools:

• 3 hole punch (optional, not needed if you use sheet protectors)

Instructions:
The quickest and easiest thing to do would be to print, hole punch, and stick the sheets in a binder. However, there are several other options. If you don’t plan to ever hang it on the wall or lay the sheets out flat in a long, continuous timeline, you could take the pages to an office supply store and have it bound. In either of these cases, I highly recommend printing it double-sided so that you will be able to look at an entire century all at once (each century is split onto 2 pages with Asia, Africa, and Europe on one sheet and North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica on the other).

After much deliberation, I decided to print this document single sided, because I do think there will come a time when I’ll want to look at large sections of it at once. Rather than hole punch each sheet, which was my original plan, I decided to put them each in their own page protector. This will make it easier to hang on the wall, but given that I probably will never look at the entire timeline at once, it would also make sense to not put EVERY sheet in page protectors and instead just use page protectors for the necessary sheets when the time comes to hang them up.

My husband also had a non-intuitive, though great suggestion, which was to reverse every other page so that you could see a whole century with all 7 continents at one time as shown (similar to if it were printed double-sided, but actually printed single-sided with blank sheets between the sheets facing each other).

Whatever you decide, I hope this free blank world history timeline is helpful to you!

Click here for more History activities for kids.

Related Links

Learning Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids
Geography Learning Activities

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