Since beginning our homeschool journey, I have found a love for history that I never had before. Learning history chronologically alongside our children has been one of the most fun parts of this homeschooling journey. I am a visual learner (just like some of our children) and have always had a fondness for maps. Really! I’d love to find old maps from throughout history and paper the walls with them (reproductions of course!). When we were given the opportunity to review TimeMaps from Knowledge Quest, I was thrilled (I hoped the children would be, too!)
How often do you read through events of history and try to follow along with where things are taking place, how and where is this group spreading or conquering, etc.? Sure you can find a static map online or with your history curriculum that gives a snapshot of that spot in time. But what did it look like a few years later? How about 20 years earlier? When you find the maps that you might use to see the timeline of events, they are often at different scales. When the group started out, they were smaller, covered a smaller area. Then they conquered and spread, covered a larger area. You won’t often find a map showing the beginning and the end on the same scale. With TimeMaps, you have the beginning and end and everything in between.
TimeMaps use Flash to display the series of maps that relate to a topic or time period. As this is a work in progress, new map sets are being added. Currently the offerings are:
- Ancient China
- Rise of Rome
- Fall of Rome
- Rise of Islam
- The Black Death
- European Exploration
- Atlantic Slave Trade
You can purchase these individually for $9.95 or the whole collection for $44.95 (a savings of $24.70). The download is available for either Windows or Mac computers. For $49.95 you can choose a CD-ROM of the collection.
In addition to the Flash animated maps, each set has a multipage teacher’s guide. This pdf file contains activities such as timeline work (includes timeline pages to print out), analysis and other activities to promote discussion and deeper thinking. You can use what is appropriate for your learners from young to old. Many of the sets also include maps to print showing the boundaries explored in the animated maps.
While viewing TimeMaps, there are options to explore the events deeper. You can toggle the “i” icon to learn more. There are points throughout the map with the same icon to click and learn some details. The “Q” option has questions that can be asked orally (and often are included as one of the activities from the teacher’s guide). The layout makes it easy to share in a classroom or co-op setting just as easily as a family or individual at home.
Oh, in case you were wondering, the children have enjoyed these maps just as much as their mama. The only drawback we have encountered is that static maps aren’t as exciting anymore. We’d love to see more of these blends of maps and timelines for other periods in history. We will be tackling both the Renaissance and early American history in the coming school year. We would be thrilled to see some new additions from these time periods.
While TimeMaps would not replace history material (though there is some great information – and some not even covered in our history spine), it makes a great supplement. Another great mapping resource from Knowledge Quest is MapTrek.On the Knowledge Quest site you can find some guides for correlating many maps from Knowledge Quest with popular history curricula.
To read other reviews of either TimeMaps or MapTrek, be sure to check out the Crew blog.
