First Timeline

The following list of names has been prepared as an introduction to world history and geography in the primary grades.  There are 36 names which will allow the teacher to make a year's curriculum after which all new historical and geographical information will have at least a general context.

Many of the names are well-known.  A few are entirely obscure, and a brief suggestion of where to find information about them is included. 

The Hedge School is engaged in producing unit studies on these names; you can wait (don't hold your breath) or begin your own.

Introduction

Where do you live?  Can you find it on the globe?  Have you always lived there?  Did your mother live there when she was a child?  Did your father?  Did your grandmothers and grandfathers?  Do they tell you stories about when they were children?  Was their life very different from your own?  Do you think it was more interesting?  Was it more comfortable?  Do you sometimes wish you could go back to their times just for a peek?

What about your great great great (that's three greats) grandparents?  In South Dakota, where I  live, except for children of the Dakota and Sioux Indians, very few of us can say our four-greats-grandparents lived here.  Where did they live?  What about your great great great great great... your fifty-greats -- grandparents?  Where did they live?  (That would be over a thousand years ago.)  Probably somewhere in Europe.  Can you find that on the globe?

What about cave-man great-grandparents?  Do you know where they lived?  Wouldn't it be fun if they could tell you some stories?

What do you suppose was the most interesting thing they did?  How did they figure out  -- first invent and then make -- all the things you just grow up with?  When did they discover the things that we just think "everyone knows"?  Did they love their children as much as your Mom and Dad love you?  Did they love God?  Did they pray?  Did they have friends?  Did they have pets?

The stories of those long ago people, the interesting things they learned and did, are called history.   Today, we are going to take a walk through history with 36 of your grandmothers and grandfathers and their friends, and learn some of their stories.  We will peek at history through 36 pairs of eyes and see what we can see.

FIRST HISTORY; FIRST GEOGRAPHY

1.Adam and Eve: the Beginning:

2.Painter of Chauvet: 30,000 B.C.

3.First Farmer -- Jericho, 10,000 B.C.

4.Noah 5,600 B.C.

5.Si Ling, 2,700 B.C. -- founder of silk culture

6.Harappa, India  2,500 B.C.

7.Father Abraham

8.Nefertiti

9.Ruth

10.King David

11.Confucius

12.Archimedes

13.Jesus, the center of history

14.Stephen & Valentine,

15.Patrick

16.Pope Gregory the Great

17.Charles Martel

18.Pangur Ban --  pet cat in an Irish monastery

19.Kobo Daishi or "Kukei", made Japanese alphabet

20.Alfred King of England

21.Cyril & Methodius

22.Good King Wenceslaus

23.Leif Ericson

24.St. Francis of Assisi

25.Cathedrals:

26.Chaucer

27.Christopher Columbus

28.William Shakespeare

29.The Mayflower

30.Bach and Handel.

31.George Washington

32.Abraham Lincoln

33.Sequoia 1773-1840

34.GW Carver

35.Mother Teresa of Calcutta

36.Look at your family