Notes on Making a Time-Line.
by Winifred Irving.
Few things can do more than a 'time-line' to integrate for a child the bewildering medley of personalities, inventions, battles, political struggles, artistic creations and social developments which make up History. As a map compresses into a sheet of paper the endless combinations of mountain, plain, river, sea and city, so a time-line reduces to an easily grasped form the course of men's lives, the rise and fall of states and of empires and the influences which have moulded them.
Children who have on their schoolroom walls both a time-chart and a time-line get into the habit of looking from the pictured square on the chart to the corresponding point on the line; in this way events and developments are linked in their minds with the dates at which they took place. Therefore, in a junior classroom, the keeping of a time-line should go side by side with the keeping of a history chart. Probably at first it will be necessary for the parent or teacher to make it, but in time the pupil will be able to carry on the work himself.
The illustration given will show more clearly than a lengthy description of what the keeping of a time-line entails, but the following notes may be helpful:
1. It is advisable to start the line from the earliest recorded times and to carry it on through the different periods studied, so that eventually the pupil has a complete picture of recorded time.
2. As in Century Books, a uniform scale should be used throughout--otherwise the usefulness of the time-line is vitiated. There is no reason, however, why a pupil should not make a separate line later on, on a larger scale, if it would clarify for him any period which he is studying and if it would contain more points of importance than can be shown on the ordinary line.
3. Lined paper is to be preferred as the lines provide a precise and ready-made scale of measurement, the space between each line standing for a chosen unit of time--say, five years. It is difficult for younger children especially to keep to a uniform scale without the help of lines or at least of careful measuring with rulers.
4. To obtain the necessary length the sheets of paper can be fastened together by some kind of gummed strip: the transparent kind used for repairing books and music is perhaps the best.
5. Ink or crayon of different colours should be used for filling in the strip at the left-hand side of the paper which represents the reigns of the various sovereigns.
6. Different coloured inks can be used for writing in the names of (a) political events, (b) military events, and events of literary, artistic and musical importance, (d) significant events in the other countries, but this is a matter for individual choice. In the illustration printed here important foreign events are given a heavy type.