CHE vs. KnowledgeQuest Timelines
Warning: Unless you are actually shopping for a timeline, this is long, dull, and a total waste of your life energy.
At the beginning of this year, I ordered KnowledgeQuest's wall Ancient History timeline. We use it, we like it, it's nice. Now that we are getting into Greece and Rome, there's not quite enough space!
We're finishing up with Ancient History and I was looking for a Middle Ages timeline. I ordered the timelines from Classical Home Education. They came in the mail yesterday. I looked at an Ancient History Timeline first and thought this is just what we need. They are on nice paper with beautiful photos.
However, I ordered the Complete Package without thoroughly investigating. There are four timelines for Ancient History. There is one timeline for Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern History. It's a beautiful timeline, but I just can't imagine using it for anything but a review of the big stuff. There's hardly room for the wars. There are three inches every hundred years. This is great when you are working on 900-800 BC, it's ridiculous when you are working on 1800-1900 or 1900-2000.
To be fair, when I look at the website, all the information is right there. I just didn't see it. Five sections of timelines, I assumed there would be one for each year.
Here is the breakdown of the timelines:
2 million BC-7000 BC
6000 BC-4000 BC
3900 BC-1900 BC
1800 BC-200 AD
300 AD-Present
KnowledgeQuest makes more sense. They have 10 feet dedicated to each year. I don't necessarily want three or four different timelines for Ancient History. I like having one timeline. On our Ancient History timeline, we don't even have very much written down until about 3100 BC.
On all of the CHE timelines there is 3 inches every one hundred years. Each timeline is about 6 feet long. They do have more space between the one hundred year increments than KnowledgeQuest for Ancient History. Knowledge Quest has about 2 inches every hundred years and is about 10 feet long. For the Middle Ages, the KQ timeline goes from 400-1600 AD, which should give about 10 inches per one hundred years (one inch per decade). For New World History, the KQ timeline is 1600-1850, which gives about 8 inches per decade. For Modern History, the timeline is 1850-Present, which again gives about 8 inches per decade.
The 200 stickers that came with the CHE timeline were nice. They are about 1.5" X 1". They were mainly of different people, but had a few events. They were small enough to give you room on the timeline, but still easy to view. KnowledgeQuest's stickers are nice, but (as clearly stated on their website) they are category stickers (there are stickers like music, art, kings, inventions, etc.).
The Classical Home Education catalog that came with the order was fabulous! There were lots of great products and nice articles. Although I don't recommend the timelines, I would definitely take a look at the rest of their catalog.
I plan on returning the CHE timelines and ordering again from KnowledgeQuest. The cheapest thing would be to make my own from construction paper. It's just not as quick and easy.
