Lessons on Time

Lessons on Time and its companion Toothpick Kit help students construct a timeline of approximately 6,000 years of human history. This timeline is a hands-on-tool for teaching the critical concepts of recording history on a timeline and how to associate the correct years with centuries or millennia. For example, if a textbook refers to the 15th century, would your child envision Columbus sailing the ocean blue, or Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door? Less than twenty-five years separated these pivotal events, yet Columbus’ fifteenth century voyage rocked the New World while the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation rocked the Old. By using toothpicks and rubber bands, students learn the related years and meanings associated with decades, centuries and millennia. Adding baby Jesus, pictured asleep on the hay, provides the visual for counting time backwards and forwards with B.C. and A.D. Like every area of study, history has its own vocabulary and acronyms. Students must learn the terms of this discipline in order to feel competent in mastering it. Lessons on Time teaches history’s unique vocabulary to elementary through high school students and the parents who educate them.