Here’s a DIY card game to increase knowledge of historical events/facts. It’s modeled after the Timeline Game. You can make it for any history period.

I made the cards above for my Hero Project which involves the World Wars. For our class, we are reading the following book:

So some of the events come from that book, and the rest of the cards involve more general WW1 and WW2 events. As we read one book a month in the coming semester, we will add more cards and we will play a game each week to increase retention of the facts.

Here’s how to make them:

1. Get index cards or cut heavy paper, like card stock, to similar size
2. Put event, image, and date on one side
3. On other side put just the event, and the image

You can sketch the images, cut from magazines, or get from the Internet.

After you’ve made your cards, here’s how to play the game!

Shuffle your deck of cards to get them out of order. Deal out four cards to each player with the side that shows the date facing down. Emphatically instruct them NOT to turn the cards over. They are not supposed to see the date side. Just have them spread the cards with the date side down, in front of them, so they can see them all at once, with only the name of the event and the image showing.

Place the rest of the cards in the draw pile, with the face of the card that has all three things face down. Turn the top card over and place in the center.

Person whose next birthday is closest goes first. He/she looks at the playing card and picks a card from his/her hand. Have the person read out loud the event. Then that person decides if it goes before or after the playing card, placing it to the left if “before” and to the right if “after.” Then he/she turns over the card from his/her hand, after making the decision. If the person is right, the person doesn’t have to draw another card from the draw pile. If the person is incorrect, the person places the card in the right spot, then draws another card. Play goes clockwise, with play getting increasingly harder as more cards are played and you have to place cards in between other cards. First person to run out of cards wins!