{Keeping} :: Royal's Timeline

For the past few weeks Royal (AOy3) has been working on his Personal Timeline. It is one of the Time Tools highlighted in Bestvater's The Living Page. She calls it The Child's Own History. This is one of the earliest forms of vitality (or notebooks) introduced to a child in order to help them begin to understand history.

By age seven or eight, it is clearer to him that things have happened before his time and the child goes on to develop the notion of a century, and only after that the vastness of all recorded history and prehistory. -Bestvater, The Living Page, p44  

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We began with the present, which, at the time, was back in the 3rd quarter of 2014. After December finished, we updated that square with a highlight from the last quarter of the year. So most entries are continuously looking back. I have to say that I am SO glad I am a photo-journalist of sorts... or shall I venture to say photo-keeper? Anyway, if I did not have photos to look back through (albums or digital pictures), I really don't know how I would jog my memory as to what happened during any given time in the past!

Here is what H.B. wrote in History: Teaching Practically Considered in a Parent's Review article:

Our knowledge of time preceeds not from the past into the future, but the present is our starting point--time as directly known to us proceeds from the past, it is necessary, by repeated acts of the imagination, to work arduously backward from the present, till a secure pathway has been trodden out, and safe landmarks and finger-posts erected.

I notice H.B. uses the phrase "to work arduously backward." Well, I imagine without photo or written documentation to jog one's memory, this would be quite an arduous task! 

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After a bit of reading, it appears there are varying ways to organize the timeline: 

• month-to-month
• quarter by quarter
• every 4 months 

...and in making entries there is another choice:

• written
• drawn

Royal chose to draw:

Dorothea Beale's Parent's Review article The Teaching of Chronology appears to give parents a pass to be a bit creative in the development of these Personal Histories:

I am sure parents will devise some very beautiful horoscopes which may take the place of those wonderful framed samplers of old times, which it will be a joy for their children to look at in later life, as they remember the birthday addition each year, the sorrows and the joys there noted down, the prayers of the family for each new-comer, and the marriage days.

A sample of her idea:

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One comment Bestvater made that struck me regarding the where of this Time Tool:

The chart needs to be highly visible, a type of wall art. -p46

I had previously been keeping it in a large binder along with pages to complete for our future Book of Centuries. Oops. So just last night I removed it and the chart is now displayed on a large bulletin board in our schoolroom area:

But why is location so important? 
What does it matter whether or not this historical layout be kept in a binder or on exhibit?
Perhaps it is akin to the crux of many aspects of a Charlotte Mason education: to be able to see with the mind's eye.
To see with the mind's eye is a treasure. If you have really seen (paid attention), you will be able to:

• recall a word's spelling
• peruse beautiful works of art whenever you fancy
• locate easily where certain geographical sites are in the world
• identify and discuss things of nature at an intimate level
• and perchance even know when particular events happened in time?

...all because you were made to visualize these things 
...and because objects from this varying subject matter were readily available to observe.


Just some of my thoughts.

What are yours?

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Linking up with Celeste at Joyous Lessons for this month's Keeping Company