A Book of Centuries is a sort of timeline in a book. A way to mark and track all of those people, events, movements, and more that you learn about. It’s a wonderful way to learn who is a contemporary of whom. It is a long term project meant to be a joy to keep. We keep one as a family and then when my kids reach 6th or 7th grade they begin keeping their own.
Disclaimer – I created the one that SCM sells here and a new Thinline version that you can see here. There are other options, these are simply what is working for my family and I wished to share it with others.
If you have the chance, read “The Living Page” by Laurie Bestvater. She explains the Book of Centuries (and all the other notebooks, etc CM talks about) so well, and I am now rethinking all of the stuff we do, including the style of BoC we are using (the one that SCM sells). Now that they are getting actual looks at and scans of notebooks kept by students and teachers at the training college, we are getting a much better idea of what CM meant as she only somewhat described the notebooks in her books and PNEU articles. A picture truly is worth a thousand words!
Laurie Bestvater’s book is good. She also offers a BOC for sale that is similar to what the PNEU schools used.
I will add that my new thin line version submitted to scm for review and previewed on my blog is very similar to those Charlotte used as well. I studied the PNEU samples before making it. I did not do so before making the first one (the one currently sold by scm) because I had no access. I kept the noteworthy chart (not in PNEU samples, but my addition) bc it’s so useful to us. This left 1/2 page for drawings which is sufficient for us and many others. I also used BC and AD. The beginning is different to account for Creation to recorded history, but I didn’t leave as much space to elaborate on old earth eras. I did not include maps in the back because we do those separately, but if you used the ebook version (if offered by scm), you could add those. The thin line version is about the size of a module guide. It is portrait oriented and easy to use, IMO. I mention this in case it is useful to any of you should SCM opt to offer it.
Christie if you don’t mind my saying this, there is a link directly under the sample box on your blog that will display the Thinline version in full screen. It was easier for me to enjoy it when I saw it that way. Looking forward to the release!