Timeline Past

 After 21 years of homeschooling which ended several years ago, you'd think I would have gotten rid of all the reminders, wouldn't you. Alas, after 21 years of collecting stuff that I thought would make great supplements to our studies, it's not all that easy to throw it out - or even part with it!

I gave a lot of homeschooling remnants to our oldest son's family, like some books, puzzles, microscope, slides, etc. For some reason, I don't think they got the birds nests, feathers, or lichen and mosses that we collected from the woods. I reluctantly got rid of those things, for the most part.

We had the sun and planets of our solar system on our walls, trying to put them into relative perspective, we still have a huge world map mural on the kitchen wall, (but why would we not always need that?) the golden wall of National Geographic magazines, and had virtually countless math and reading games and manipulatives - and maps. Lots and lots of maps. No, I haven't parted with the stacks of folded maps or the many pull-down maps -  and don't intend to.

I think one of the cats ate the part of the adding machine tape that said ''s War.' (see above)

Did I love homeschooling?  Yes, while I did it. I enjoyed every single day, even those days that I called 'mental health day' and took a vacation from school.  But now that it's all over, do I miss it?  An emphatic NO!!

Surprisingly, I have no desire to homeschool the neighbor kids, go to a homeschool convention, or read the homeschooling magazines that still come to our address - unsolicited. And I never have had a subscription to any of them.

The most difficult thing of all to part with, the final thing to go, was my beloved timeline. The kids and I had made a timeline that ran around the schoolroom walls, in layers, with adding machine tape, a Sharpie, and tags we made ourselves. A timeline of world and U.S. history is the most fun and useful thing imaginable.  

 

My kids will never forget that the Hundred Years' War was just below the kitchen pass-through window, movable type was invented just under the U.S. flag, and the Great Fire of London was just under the right side of the large set of pull-down world history maps. They may never remember the dates, but darn it, they better remember the sequence!!

 

It was after taking photos of the timeline that I was finally reluctantly able to pull out all the staples, take down all the tags and the adding machine paper, stuff them into a manila envelope (whose location is now a mystery), and paint the walls.

That was a couple years ago. I still feel very good about it. It was just today, however, that I had to go to my photo files and take a peek at my timeline. Sometimes I miss it.

P.S. I didn't post all the photos, for which you can thank me. The colored ribbons, by the way, ran from the beginning of a reign to the end of a reign. I'm very visual. :-)