When I created the world history timeline all those years ago, I decided to break it up by world region. The reader that requested the American history timeline suggested rather than geographical region, I make divisions for type of events. As someone whose American history knowledge is a little weak, I decided to compile a list of American history events before I decided on my categories.

After going through various history references to create my list of the most significant events in American history, I decided on 6 categories: politics, economics, judicial system, conflicts, achievements, and other important events. “Politics” covers things like presidential elections and acts of Congress. “Economics” covers events like the Great Depression or the creation of the minimum wage. “Judicial system” events covers judicial decisions and other events having to do with the Supreme Court. “Conflicts” covers wars and battles. “Achievements” covers advancements and other successes of the human race. “Important events” is basically a catch-all for everything else.

Since there is not a lot of American history that is documented before European colonization, I decided to start my timeline at 1600. Since there is a lot of American history to document, I opted to only cover 10 years per page. To cover those events which happened before 1600, I created a page without dates for “Before 1600.” Note that if you choose to use my list of important events in American History, they are color-coded to match the timeline.

I also decided to create two different version of the timeline. Since I own and LOVE my binding machine (read my review here), I opted to bind mine along the short edge of the paper. Therefore, I initially created a landscape version of this timeline. What I really love about this format is that it gives you a 2-page spread that lets you view more of the timeline at once.

However, since not everyone has a binding machine, I figured most people will probably just put the pages in a 3 ring binder. Therefore, I created a vertical “portrait” version as well. The pages themselves are mainly the same except the cover and the “Before 1600” page. However, the file is formatted such that if you print choosing to “flip on the long edge,” the pages will be oriented correctly.

Feel free to choose the version below which best suits your needs.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: about 10 minutes to print and bind, less time for 3-ring binder
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, under $2 in used supplies if binding, about $2-3 if using a 3-ring binder

Materials:

• blank United States history timeline (horizontal version for binding or vertical version for 3-ring binder)
• binding machine or 1/2 inch 3 ring binder
• 1/4″ binding combs (only if binding)
• 2 binding covers (only if binding)

Instructions:

1. Print out the blank United States history timeline. Choose the horizontal version if you will be binding it. Choose the vertical version if you will be placing it in a 3-ring binder.
2. If you are binding, place the 1/4″ comb in the binding machine. Hole punch a clear cover using the binding machine and attach it to the comb. Hole punch about 12 pages at a time of the timeline and add those to the comb as well.

   

3. Once all the pages have been added to the comb, add the second clear page as a backing. Remove from the binding machine.
4. Use scissors to cut off the excess comb.

   

If you would prefer your timeline to stay “American History” instead of “United States History,” I’ve created some alternate covers as well.

Once you have your blank United States history timeline ready to go, have your student fill it in however best suits your purposes. If a child were studying American history, they could gradually fill it in as they learn.

Since our family will likely not spend an entire year on American history again, I opted to just go ahead and fill in everything. I used my List of Important Events in American History to create a document that my kids and I can use for reference. As their educator, I found it very helpful for just sorting out American history in my own mind.

I’m hoping sometime soon I can create a similar timeline for Modern History. Our blank world history timeline by region is great. However, the 100 years per page is insufficient once you reach about 1600 AD. If you would like to be notified when that timeline is available, please consider signing up for my newsletter.

Have fun studying American history with this blank United States history timeline!

Related Links

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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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Geography Learning Activities

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If you wanted to extend this activity further, it turns out the U.S. Mint has free 50 State Quarters Program^® lesson plans for K-6. My daughter keeps finding coins from the America the Beautiful Quarters^® program, so we may need to start a collection for that soon too. I never realized, but it turns out there are also commemorative penny and nickel collections. Who knew?

If, like us, you are also studying U.S. geography, be sure to check out my United States toothpick map for a fun, hands-on activity for learning the locations of all the states!

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~15 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, about a dollar for a piece of foam board

Materials:

• 2 sheets of paper for printing the United States quarters collection printable
• foam board (at least 11 inches by 16 inches)
• tape (we ended up using double-sided, but either will work)
• quarters!

Supplies & Tools:

• glue stick
• X-acto knife
• scissors

Instructions:

1. Print out 2 pages of the Unites States quarters collection printable. Note that the first 2 pages are in color and the last 2 pages are black and white, so choose whichever works better for you.
2. Glue the left page onto the upper left hand edges of the foam board.



3. Cut off the extra little strip of paper on the second page as shown.



4. Glue the second page onto the foam board, overlapping with the first page slightly to line up the letters



5. Use an X-acto knife or other sharp cutting tool to cut off the extra foam board around the edges of the paper.



6. Give your child a few coins to start their collection and let them find the states on the board. Readers can use the alphabetized names. Non-readers can match pictures.



7. Use tape to attach the quarters to the board. We used double sided tape which had the advantage that if we wanted to switch quarters, we didn’t pull the tape off the board, just the quarter, but rolling up single sided tape works too.



8. Make sure to push on the quarters to get them to stick.

Have fun with your new coin collection!

Click here for more Geography activities and printables for kids.

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There are geography products on the market involving straight pins that look amazing (see for example Pin It! Maps), but I have two issues with these. One, I don’t trust my older kids not to leave straight pins out where my baby or toddler can find them. Two, those products are expensive and my hubby is ultra-frugal. It would be a hard sell to convince him to shell out that kind of cash on maps.

As an alternative, I decided to make my oldest this “toothpick map” for the United States of America, since that’s what he’s studying this year. (In case you’re interested, we’re using this curriculum (not an affiliate) combined with this Smart About the 50 States book. My son loves it. Learning about the states is one of his favorite parts of our homeschool day.)

I particularly like using toothpicks for a couple reasons. First, they just seem safer to me than pins. I cut off the ends, so even if my baby finds one, he’s unlikely to hurt himself. Second, I can pre-punch all the holes into our foam board and they fit inside and stand up easily without having to poke different holes on each attempt. However, if you REALLY wanted to use straight pins instead with the flags/labels I made, I’m not going to stop you. They would also work.

All the pictures in this post show the version I made, which is in color, but for your convenience, I also am including a black and white version in my free printable. Your kids could even color it in themselves. Just makes sure to match the colors of the states in the labeled and unlabeled versions in order to make identifying states using the control map easier. Also, I wanted my hands-on map to be bigger than a single sheet of paper, but not everyone might. You’ll notice in the printable that there are single and double page options for both the blank toothpick map and the labeled control maps. I chose to use the double size map for the toothpicks and the single page map for the control sheet which we use to check answers. Lastly, I don’t really care if my kids can identify state flags. I just want them to know where states are. However, for added fun, I put the state name on one side of the label and the state’s flag on the other.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I’ve been using this map for the past day and on my last try, I got 46 states right. (Okay, my husband helped a little.) My son is also improving in his ability to identify where states are (though to be honest, he was already pretty good at it). Isn’t hands-on learning the best?

I fully intend to make toothpick maps for countries on each continent at some point in the not-too-distant future (I hope). Sign up for my newsletter if you’d like to stay in the loop with what I’m working on.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School, adulthood (for people like me)
Time Required: ~90 minutes (it does take some time…for older kids, maybe have them glue all those flags!)
Difficulty: Easy (initially I was having a little difficulty poking holes with my toothpick in the foam board, but I discovered a trick described below)
Cost: Free printable, a couple dollars for toothpicks and foam board

Materials:

• Paper for printing United States of America Toothpick Map printable (Note: you will not need all of these pages. See instructions.)
• a piece of foam board (no bigger than 17″x11″ is needed)
• contact paper or clear laminate (optional, for reinforcing labels on toothpicks…I used this)

Supplies & Tools:

• toothpicks (50 plus a couple extra for poking holes, just in case one gets bent)
• scissors
• X-acto knife (or other tool for cutting foam board)
• glue stick
• nail or screw (not shown, recommended for starting holes in foam board)

Instructions:

1. Print out the desired pages from the United States of America Toothpick Map printable. You will definitely need page 1 which has the labels. I chose to print the colored, single page control map on page 2 and the colored, double-page blank map on pages 8 and 9. You may prefer to use only single or double pages and/or to print in black and white.
2. Glue the blank map onto the piece of foam board. Since I used a double page map, first I glued the left page onto the corner of the foam board.



3. If you are using a double page map, cut along the gray line to remove the extra paper from the right page.



4. Apply glue to the foam board and the back of the paper.



5. Line up the right hand paper with the left hand paper to make the double page map.



6. Next, you will need to poke holes in all the states with the toothpick. I first started doing this by just using a toothpick. However, after breaking a couple toothpicks, I discovered this process was much easier if you used a sharp instrument like a nail or screw to start the hole before using the toothpick.



7. Next comes the toothpick labels. I decided to use a piece of clear laminate to reinforce the labels to make sure they would last for all 4 of my kids. If you only have responsible children, you could probably skip this step. If you are going to reinforce them, make sure you only apply the covering to the top side of the paper.



8. Cut out the flags.



9. Fold each label in half.



10. Glue each label onto a toothpick.



11. Cut off the sharp end of the toothpicks.



12. Insert all the toothpick labels into the appropriate states.



13. If you haven’t already, cut around the paper on your foam board. I used an X-acto knife.



14. If any of the labels come off the toothpicks when you are poking them into the holes, just apply some more glue to the toothpick and stick the label back where it belongs. This happened to a couple of ours the first time we used the board, but hasn’t happened since.

To use the United States of America toothpick map, learn about the states a few at a time. Smart About the 50 States is a good resource for this, particularly for children in early elementary. Give your child the flags for the states studied and see if they can remember where they belong. They can check their answers using the control map. Mistakes are totally fine! They can just try again next time. Once they become good at the states they’ve learned, gradually add more until they can remember the whole map.

Enjoy!

Click here for more Geography activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

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Never mind your kids for a minute…If you live in the United States, do you know all your Supreme Court justices? My kiddos are WAY too young to find these cards and the associated game useful, but as a U.S. citizen and a grown-up, and especially after all the excitement that’s been going on in the Court recently, I wanted to make sure I knew them all. After all, these are some of the most influential people in the U.S.

You’ve probably heard of Chief Justice John Roberts. If you’ve been paying attention to politics recently, you’ve also probably heard of the Notorious RBG and Antonin Scalia of “jiggery-pokery” fame. You might also know that the only current African American member of the Court is Clarence Thomas and, as a Hispanic female, personally I took note when Sonia Sotomayor was nominated. However, I had no idea Kennedy was such a liberal-leaning conservative. Breyer never even showed up on my radar until this latest session when he read a second impassioned dissent in the recent death penalty case. I probably heard that there was a third female Justice serving on the Supreme Court at some point, but I had completely forgot about Kagan. Honestly, I thought Scalia and Alito were the same person.

If you’re like me and getting your Justices mixed up, I’m hoping these Supreme Court Justice cards will help. By combining them with the control cards, you (or your kids) can use them as a self-correcting exercise in matching the name/bio cards to the pictures. You can also use them for a two-player memory style matching game. Just imagine how smart you’ll feel at the next dinner party you attend. Just kidding. :)

In case you’re interested in some of the recent happenings at the Supreme Court, here are summaries of the biggest decisions that occurred within the last month:

• Obergefell v. Hodges – In a historic 5 to 4 decision with Anthony Kennedy joining the liberal-leaning Justices, the Court declared that states could not ban same-sex marriage thereby ensuring marriage equality for all.
• King v. Burwell – In a 6 to 3 decision with Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts joining the more liberal justices, the Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
• Glossip v. Gross – In a 5 to 4 decision with all the conservative-leaning justices banding together, the Court ruled that it was NOT considered cruel and unusual punishment to use a controversial lethal injection drug. In a surprising and unusual deviation from normal protocol, 2 dissents were read out loud by members of the liberal minority.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~15 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $2 in used supplies if you choose to laminate

Materials:

• paper (for printing Supreme Court Justice cards and associated control cards)
• laminating pouches (optional)

Supplies & Tools:

• laminator (optional)
• paper cutter (or scissors)

Instructions:

1. Print the Supreme Court Justice Cards and Control Cards. (Note that only the first 3 pages of each document need to be printed as the last 2 pages contain legal information about sharing and image sources.)
2. Laminate them. (Or don’t.)
   
3. Cut them out.
   

HAPPY LEARNING!

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