My Book of Centuries Solution

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have really struggled with finding a Book of Centuries that works for us. For a year I searched and wondered. I even purchased the download from Simply Charlotte Mason. Nothing was working. Either they were too expensive, too difficult to bind, too…something. I was looking for something that I had imagined in my mind, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.

If you are starting to think this is all about me, I suppose there is a chance this is true. What I mean is, I try to set the example in these things. So all of this struggle has been that I’ve tried different Books of Centuries and I’ve not liked them.

Last year, we bumbled along with a century chart for the years pertinent to our study for the year. I had hand-drawn the chart in a cheap notebook. Miss Mason used cheap notebooks! I knew that Books of Centuries didn’t need to cost so much.

My husband tried to tell me I wouldn’t have the patience to continue to hand draw charts and though I let him know how wrong I thought he was, he turned out to be … right.

I searched online again, and still couldn’t find what I was looking for.

And so I made one.

Among other things, I really wanted a 2-page grid. I am keeping one myself, as I mentioned, and I really wanted to put more than one thing in a square. Yes, I still intend to try and pick the Single Most Important Even of Each Year, but I’d like to be able to note things — like major wars — in the background. The goal is to be able to put the picture of history together as we go along, and I wanted wars, darn it!

Ahem.

I know that the idea is that you have the entire century chart on one page, and then a blank page opposite with room to draw “artifacts” that the child sees in real life. Here is where my lack of gas money shows itself. It is highly unlikely that my children will see much of anything in real life, barring my winning the lottery which, incidentally, is very hard to win when one doesn’t play

We don’t really have museums here, and it’d cost me almost a hundred dollars in gas to get to the nearest good one.

Yes, I drive a gas guzzler. You can’t haul hay with a compact car, people!

Now, I’m not saying they’ll never go to a museum, only that we aren’t going to be like Miss Mason’s students, logging plenty of museum hours throughout our education.

So, considering our situation, having a bigger chart and leaving blank pages in between (on the off chance that we really do go to a museum) works for us.

Here is how my BOC works: I didn’t print all the pages for all the years we’ll ever study. Noooo. Instead, I created a template. I printed the one century I needed at the time, and the template is easily updated for whatever years I’ll need in the future.

Because my chart covers two pages, I make sure they are facing each other when I hole-punch them.

I put them in a simple binder, which I found on sale when school supply shopping.

And I made a cover that I thought looked nice because … well, because I like it to look nice or at least interesting.

Today, I’m going to give you copies, in case you want to put together a similar binder for yourself or your children. I really think that keeping a Book of Centuries while pre-reading the children’s school books enhances the whole experience and aids in understanding.

There are basically two approaches to pre-reading. The first is to view it as a burden, a chore that must be done. I’m not going to say I’ve never seen it that way. But the second way is preferable, I think. It’s to see it as a chance for self-education, to grow in understanding of God’s world, and how it’s gone for the past few millenia.

Anyhow, here are the two documents.

This first one is the binder cover sheet {with a place to write in a name by hand} and a title for the side. The title will fit a standard 1-inch binder {or bigger, but not smaller}.

• Book of Centuries Cover Pages

This second one is the century chart template, the two-page spread I mentioned. Leaving the backs blank means there is still sketching room if we have the opportunity to See Something Interesting.

• Book of Centuries: Editable 2-Page Spread

So…I suppose you noticed it is three pages? I don’t know why. Some sort of formatting error, and I haven’t the patience to fix it. So just print pages 1 and 3, and you’ll be alright. {This formatting error was fixed by my dear friend, Hayley. Thanks, Hayley!}

To make it extra fun, I purchased some Sharpie colored pens. I love these pens because they are brightly colored, but don’t bleed through the pages. I’m sort of color-coding my charts. So, wars are in red, for example. I probably won’t use all the colors, but I’m selecting colors for a few basic categories like people, events, and artistic artifacts {books, paintings, etc.}.

Do you keep a Book of Centuries?

Want to read more about keeping a BOC?

• The Book of Centuries by GM Bernau
• The Teaching of Chronology by Dorothea Beale