Timeline and Sources of History

As a project, write the history of your family (or village if you live in one), using sources of history at your disposal. Ask your teacher to guide you.

Can we compare historians to detectives? Give reasons for your answers.

A few exercises with dates:

Plan a visit to a nearby museum: the visit should be prepared with some prior research on the kind of exhibits the museum holds. Keep notes during the visit. Write a brief report afterwards, highlighting what was unexpected / interesting / fun about the visit and the exhibits.

Invite to your school an archaeologist or a historian and ask them to speak on the history of your region and why it's important to know it.

Draw a simple timeline marking every year from 2 BCE to 2 CE; you will see that because of the absence of a year zero, only 3 years have passed between those two dates.

Create a timeline stretching from 1900 CE to the current year and place the dates of birth of your grandparents, parents, siblings and yourself. Also, mark the years that the 20th century CE begins with and ends with.

Can you collect information about at least three generations of your family on your mother's and father's sides? Create a family tree with your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Find out their names, what they did for a living and where they were born. Also, write the sources from where you got this information.

How did you find details about your family's past? Did you rely on things like photographs, diaries, ID cards or memories from your parents and relatives?

What is the earliest memory you can recollect? Do you remember how old you were at that time? Those memories together are a part of your past, maybe going five or six years back.

How do you think understanding the past will help us understand the present world?

Have you ever seen old coins, books, clothes, jewellery or utensils in and around your house? What type of information can we gain from such objects? Or from old houses or buildings?