Homeschool Art History: A Timeline of the History of Photography

 

The kids and I are doing a short art history study on the history of photography, so it's a fine time to bring back our absolute favorite homeschool staple: the DIY timeline!!!

We still speak often about our big basement timeline, and I wish so much that we'd continued it in this house. But its magic lives on, I suppose, in the kids' happy memories, and in their eagerness, even at the ripe old ages of 15 and 17, to DIY this photography timeline with me.

I used A Chronology of Photography as my main resource for deciding upon the photos to include. I added in additional photos of LGBTQIA+ history and the history of People of Color, but looking at our finished timeline I can clearly see that I need WAY more non-Eurocentric photos, too, yikes. I also added in photos of important events, like the first Moon landing, World War 2 events, etc., because I want the kids to remember that photography, along with its artistic value, is an important way to explore and analyze history. Photographs are also cultural artifacts that speak to the time, place, and culture of their creation, so it's helpful to also source photos where those aspects are easy to identify.

 To get a high-quality image of a photograph, do a Google Image search, click Tools to reveal a set of filters, then filter the Size for Large:

Anyone else obsessed with the Cottingley Fairies? The kids and I talk about these world's greatest pranksters ALL THE TIME. 

Even though the photographs that I'm printing for this project are only about a quarter-page at the widest, if I'm going to the trouble to find and download an image, I like to get the largest size possible.

Because what if next year I need a wall-sized version of the Cottingley Fairies photos, hmm? What then?!?

I rename artwork images Title Artist Year, and put them in folders that I'll hopefully be able to make sense of later, ahem. 

Once I had a good selection of photos representing the history of photography, I sent the images to Matt, he put them four to a page for me, and I printed them onto cardstock and cut them out:

On the back of each photo card, I wrote the work's title, artist, and year, and that was our stack of photos all ready to go!

To play a game with these, deal out a few photos to everybody, and leave another stack of photos as a draw pile. Take the top photo from the draw pile, read out its title, artist, and date, then place it down to start your timeline.

The goal of the game is to place your photos in their correct spots on the timeline. You put your photo where you think it goes, then turn it over and read out the title, artist, and date. If your photo is in the correct spot, your turn is over. If your photo is incorrect, correct it and then draw another photo. The first person to correctly place all of their photos is the winner!

The game gets harder as it goes on and you fill in all those big gaps in time!

Look at that lovely, long timeline, chock-full of fascinating moments of history and interesting artistic interpretations:

I wanted to leave our timeline on display--maybe the kids will memorize some dates, and maybe it'll allow us the space to have more conversations about some of these images--so Syd and I tacked twine to the front of our big bookshelves, then the kids transferred the completed timeline to it:

We're slightly overlapping the map for our Meso-America study--oops!

The result isn't quite the big basement timeline of our memories, but it IS chaotic and messy enough to remind us of it!

The kids are currently working on a separate photograph analysis project, so we'll definitely add those photos to this timeline, and now that it's up I might as well keep adding more photos relevant to our other studies. You know how much I love context!

And then we'll take some photographs of our own!

Here are the resources that we've used so far:

Story of the World Chapter Two Timeline Review

Our Story of the World Study looks mostly like this:

1. Week One: Listen to our current chapter on audiobook. Answer the quiz questions and review all prior quiz questions. Add the current quiz questions to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
2. Week Two: Listen again to our current chapter on audiobook. Complete the map work from the Story of the World Activity Book. Compare the completed map to our other geography references--Google Earth, our Montessori puzzle maps, our family atlas, etc.
3. Week Three: Read a picture book or watch a documentary related to our current study. Add new timeline cards to our materials, and glue them to our big basement timeline. Order all the timeline cards covered so far, and add ordering the timeline cards to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
4. Weeks Four and Beyond: Read more picture books, watch more documentaries, and complete other unit-based hands-on studies and related memory work until at least one of the kids feels ready to move on.

I always think it's exciting to add new material to our big basement timeline: 

It's still not a project that the girls ever show a lot of interest in outside of the school-time study that we do with it (although they do always perk up when I suggest putting something that they're otherwise interested in, some book or myth, on the timeline), but it makes me, personally, very happy to have it, and I think that one of these days they'll grow into it and get excited about it and take ownership of it.

Since we come back to Egypt again in Chapter 4, for Chapter 2 we'll be doing projects that deal specifically with the geography and mythology of Ancient Egypt. For books, I've checked out every single story about Egyptian gods and goddesses from our public library (yes, I AM that obnoxious!), and my hope is to have the girls record some sort of family tree/genealogy for each figure, as well as a summary of some of their stories. I'm not yet sure how this will work--a homemade book with a page for each figure and brief summaries, as well as video recordings of the girls re-telling their stories, perhaps?

Other projects that are in the running, as long as interest holds out:

• cookie map of Egypt--The girls are CONSTANTLY on the lookout for things to recreate in cookie form! I think we'll do a cookie of modern Egypt, and decorate with frosting and candy to represent the boundaries of Ancient Egypt, the Nile, and the location of major ancient monuments.
• A Coloring Book of Ancient Egypt depicting tomb art (we can do more of these in Chapter 4, when the pyramids are discussed)
• map of Ancient Egypt flip book
• labeled map of Ancient Egypt coloring page
• interpretations of the myths--I want to keep encouraging the girls to think about how stories are continually re-interpreted and used to give different meanings to different times (this will help when SOTW begins to avidly re-tell the Christian myths), so I'm considering having us watch Stargate all together, or listen to the audiobook of The Red Pyramid, which both contain some really fun re-interpretations of Egyptian mythology.
• paper models of the Egyptian gods and goddesses
• posters of the Egyptian gods and goddesses for matching games and memory work
• I SUPER want to buy these Egyptian gods and goddesses toys!!! I won't, though.
• Egyptian gods and goddesses coloring pages--these would be perfect for the book that I want the girls to make.

Okay, that's a crazy amount of projects, but it's okay, because we only have to do the fun ones.

And two chapters later, we can start mummifying things!

Civil Rights on the Big Basement Timeline

Although, as I mentioned before, we're not going into many explicit details of the Civil Rights struggle in America in our study of Martin Luther King, Jr., the girls are familiar with several key dates now. Instead of memorizing them, one morning I asked Willow to comb through our many reference materials and collate several such dates; she and Sydney then helped me search Google Images for appropriate imagery. The girls divided the images, dictated a caption for each, then wrote the caption with the image. They cut everything out, grabbed our big jar of sparkly Mod Podge and a foam brush, and headed downstairs with me, where I helped them place each date in its correct spot on our big basement timeline and they glued them to the wall:

Let's see...we've got King's birth and death, of course, but also the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Ghandi, George Wallace (I wasn't thrilled about including him, because I didn't want to have to see him every time I walk downstairs, and I flat-out refused to permit the girls to include images of segregation--I told them that I just didn't want to see pictures of people acting ugly on our wall), and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

I am growing ever unhappier with the lack of foresight that I showed when laying out our basement timeline--the amount of room that I allocated for modern history is critically tight. I have long harbored dreams of moving to some little hobby farm or other outside of town--let the need for a much more spacious wall timeline be added to my list of reasons to move (along with a sunny yard to garden, a creek, space for a flock of chickens and two dwarf goats, and a second storey to the house).

Story of the World on the Timeline

I LOVE adding stuff to our big basement timeline. I love it more than the girls do. I'm pretty sure that I won't be happy until I've covered every white space around that timeline with Sharpie text, Mod Podged pictures, and increasingly meandering arrows pointing to dates on the line.

We've listened happily to Story of the World audiobooks for years, but now that we're starting a formal study of Story of the World, part of the work for each chapter includes printing out two copies of timeline cards for each chapter (I'm sorry to say that the blog in which these particular timeline cards could originally be found is no longer online, although these cards were made by another homeschool parent, and so you could certainly make your own!). One copy of each card is laminated, and as part of their schoolwork the girls memorize the dates on them and practice ordering them.

The other copy, however, is cut out and glued--

--right to the timeline wall!

You can probably tell just from this short segment that there's some overlap--at some point we must have read about nomads in 6000 BCE, and put THAT on the timeline, before we began Story of the World. I don't mind, however, especially because it helps us remember that history isn't the strict continuum that we might fool ourselves into believing. For instance, SOTW specifically talks about nomads in the Fertile Crescent, and THEN farmers in the same region, but it's important to know that all the nomads didn't just suddenly up and become farmers, especially because there are still nomads today.

And yes, I still do have plans for that big basement map that I've been talking about for two years. I wonder if I should get that done so that we can put the Fertile Crescent on it?

Homeschool Biology: Horse Evolution on the Timeline

Our science right now consists of both horse biology and chicken biology--the kids are taking horseback riding lessons, and we have chicks!

It's mostly memory work stuff, these topics, because I still have my eye on starting an in-depth study of human biology later this summer, so the plan is to study classification, evolution, labeling of internal and external parts, life cycle, breeds, and stewardship for both creatures. Because horses and chicks are of special interest to the kids right now, their interest and engagement will aid their learning, while interacting with and caring for the actual creatures add depth and context and increase their capacity for taking in the material. But much of the actual content that they'll be exploring are actually foundational biology concepts that will build their overall knowledge base and enable me to add increasing depth and sophistication to their further studies.

Classification of horses made for a great research project (and how stoked were we when we finally learned what "odd-toed ungulate" means!), labeling is something that the kids work on every day as part of their memory work (their riding instructor also includes this, briefly, into their lessons), horse care is also covered during their lessons and through library books and videos, breed study is mostly still to come, although the kids have written reports about the horse breed that each rides during her lessons, life cycle is still to come (birthing videos on YouTube--yay!), and evolution was studied last week!

Our horse anatomy coloring book has a page on horse evolution, which the kids colored, cut out, and organized chronologically, then we added in a ton more modern horse ancestors using this online, interactive fossil map. I printed each ancestor off, then the kids cut out the images and important information and added each one to its proper place in the chronology:

I read out loud the info about each ancestor, we discussed how each one represented a change, and then it was downstairs to the big basement timeline, with stacks of horse ancestors, a pot of Mod Podge, and two foam paintbrushes.

It tortures me that our basement timeline isn't perfect--there's not enough room for everything (the lack of space in the Modern Age is critical), the layout of the epochs isn't even, and because it's so busy, it's too easy to accidentally place something in the incorrect decade, or even, in the prehistoric era, the incorrect millennium.

I don't know how you would fix that, though, without standardizing the entries beyond what would be fun for the kids. They like giant pictures, and entire coloring pages, and images printed from the internet, and large, messily-handwritten captions.

And so they glued up their links in the evolution of the horse more or less in the correct spots:

You can at least gather some facts from the messy timeline--horses come after the dinosaurs, and begin to overlap, towards this end of their evolution, with the beginnings of our record of human evolution. Much further down towards the present, we also record the horse's extinction in North America, and then its reintroduction.

And THAT leads to some interesting exploration of human history, and geography, and then leads pretty logically to breed study.

But first I think that we're going to watch those horse birthing videos on YouTube.

Timeline

I've had this timeline project in my head for probably a year. It was always one of those ideas that I'd think of often, then dismiss with, "Well, that's something for when we homeschool."

And now we homeschool.

It involved repainting the basement hallway from the top of the stairs all the way down and down the hall and around the corner, a lot of thought work in allocating appropriate space to different time periods (it was never an option to make an uniform allocation of space--too many billions of years in which nothing interesting went on), and, yes, I lowered our house's resale value just a little bit more, but the girls and I worked hard on its preparation, and we're all three very pleased.

We begin at the top of the basement stairs. There's a foot and some change at the very top where nothing's happened yet because it's in the future, but soon enough, we're far back enough in time that interesting things have begun to occur.

I had not intended to permit the children to graffiti the wall, but as I worked on the timeline with Sydney at my side, and she began to draw all over with our Sharpies, VERY excited about "making our timeline pretty," I thought to myself, "Eh."

And so the timeline is pretty as well as informative:

I want our timeline to grow as the children's learning and interests grow, so I tried to keep my beginning entries as minimal as possible on subjects about which the children aren't yet interested (if you want to see an AMAZING and comprehensive on-the-wall timeline, check out the timeline at Ordinary Life Magic). Instead, I tried to only lay out markers, so to speak, placeholders that will help us put dates down accurately without a lot of figuring. So I've noted the beginning point of American history, for instance:

The Medieval period:

The Christian era begins at the bottom of the stairs:

The Classical Age:

Don't worry--when we get to a part of history that we're interested in, you'll be able to tell:

And when we get to a part of history that we're really, REALLY interested in, I think that you'll be able to tell that, too:

As much as possible, I want to enhance the timeline with images--photos, magazine illustrations, ideally lots of stuff created by the girls--and of course I hope that the girls will take charge of adding anything from small notations to entire essays of their own writing as they grow. These current images come from a second copy that we somehow have of the Smithsonian Handbook on dinosaurs--we just cut that sucker up and glued it to the wall (remember what I told you about lowering the house's resale value?) Will and I cut out the entries on various prehistoric creatures that we're the fondest of. Syd's cut-outs are different, but also pretty awesome:

Eventually we go back so far that continuing in a straight line would be either wasteful of space or misleading as to the time involved, so instead I switched to a spiral layout:

And in the center of the spiral?

BOOM!!!

We love our timeline, and already I can tell that it was a great idea. Context is everything, layering new information over old, putting events into perspective...

And we get to draw on the walls!

P.S. If you like the timeline, wait until I show you the maps wall.

The Magic Tree House on Our Timeline: Updated August 2022

Back in 2010, I wrote this post about how my little kids and I used the Magic Tree House series as part of a history study by pasting thumbnail images of the books onto a huge timeline mural that we made in our basement. In the dozen years since, and long after those little kids are now big kids who remember Magic Tree House fondly but wouldn't dream of actually picking one up again, I've continued to get comments from readers who wish I'd update my list with all the books that have come out since.

So today, I did! This new list includes all the Magic Tree House books currently published as of August 2022.

Dishes are in the dishwasher, laundry is in the washing machine, dinner is on the stove, one kid is playing LEGOs while the other kid reads on the couch, and the house that Matt painstakingly straightened while we were gone is trashed, trashed, TRASHED.

We must be home again!

We left a few projects in the lurch for our trip--our bat house, the thankful tree, the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic, a whole slew of Spanish flashcards--and every now and then, as the kids decompress and I continue my manic run through the holiday craft fair season, we're picking them all back up again.

For instance, we finally finished a project that we've been working on for a while--putting all the Magic Tree House books in their proper spot on our huge basement timeline. Because the kids listen to the Magic Tree House audiobooks over and over again, they've gained quite a bit of historical and geographical knowledge, but it can be tough putting that into a wider context, and wider contexts is what I am all about.

So I sent Matt thumbnails of every Magic Tree House book cover for him to lay out and print, and I made a list of where each relevant book belongs on our timeline. Want to see my list? It's pretty great:

• #1 Dinosaur Before Dark--Cretaceous period
• #2 The Knight at Dawn--Middle Ages
• #3 Mummies in the Morning--2630 BCE to 2250 BCE
• #4 Pirates Past Noon--1690-1730
• #5 Night of the Ninjas--1336-1600
• #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth--Late Pleistocene period
• #8 Midnight on the Moon--2036
• #10 Ghost Town at Sundown--1850-1900
• #13 Vacation under the Volcano--79 CE
• #14 Day of the Dragon King--first century
• #15 Viking Ships at Sunrise--9th century
• #16 Hour of the Olympics--776 BCE-393 CE
• #17 Tonight on the Titanic--1912
• #18 Buffalo before Breakfast--1850-1900
• #21 Civil War on Sunday--1861-1865
• #22 Revolutionary War on Wednesday--12/25/1776
• #23 Twister on Tuesday--1870s
• #24 Earthquake in the Early Morning--1906
• #25 Stage Fright on a Summer Night--1558-1603
• #27 Thanksgiving on Thursday--1621
• #28 High Tide in Hawaii--11th century-1777
• #29 A Big Day for Baseball--1947
• #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas--1930
• #31 Warriors in Winter--100s CE
• #32 To the Future, Ben Franklin!--1787
• #33 Narwhal on a Sunny Night--975-990
• #34 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #6) Season of the Sandstorms--prior to the 8th century
• #34 Late Lunch with Llamas--15th century
• #35 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #7) Night of the New Magicians--1889
• #35 Camp Time in California--1903
• #36 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #8) Blizzard of the Blue Moon--1938
• #37 Dragon of the Red Dawn--1185-1603
• #38 Monday with a Mad Genius--around 1500
• #39 Dark Day in the Deep Sea--1870s
• #41 Moonlight of the Magic Flute--1760
• #42 A Good Night for Ghosts--1916
• #43 Leprechaun in Late Winter--1860
• Merlin Mission #17 A Crazy Day with Cobras--1500-1600
• Merlin Mission #18 Dogs in the Dead of Night--1600s
• Merlin Mission #19 Abe Lincoln at Last--1861
• Merlin Mission #20 A Perfect Time for Pandas--2008
• Merlin Mission #21 Stallion by Starlight--340 BCE
• Merlin Mission #22 Hurry Up, Houdini!--1915
• Merlin Mission #23 High Time for Heroes--1849-1850
• Merlin Mission #24 Soccer on Sunday--1970
• Merlin Mission #25--Shadow of the Shark--before 1511
• Merlin Mission #26 Balto of the Blue Dawn--1925

Some books aren't included in the list because they don't take place in any particular time--wait with bated breath for our big geography project later on. We're also still reading the latest Magic Tree House, the one about Charles Dickens, and then we'll put that one on the timeline, too.

Sydney helped me cut out all the book cover thumbnails, then Willow glued them onto the wall as I showed her where each one went. She coated each in an extra layer of glitter glue, just because, and then I went back and wrote in the timeline info:

I had no idea, until we actually started placing them, how many books Mary Pope Osborne had set in the latter half of the nineteenth century or so. If we ever move and thus need to do our timeline over again, remind me to set aside more room here just for her.

For a while the girls listened to this book over and over and over again--I think they found the part with the ghost thrilling:

 

But last night they listened to this book as they fell asleep:

I was going to encourage them to listen to Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I don't seem to have ripped the audio copy from a library CD yet. Fortunately, we own a paperback copy of the book, so perhaps we'll find time to read it out loud together today.

Interspersed with making Pilgrim paper dolls and the thankful tree and the dinner roll dough to freeze for Thursday, that is...