Blast From the Past

My children were so excited by this card game--a cross between "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?" and solitaire--they didn't think of it as a learning game. Yet days later when the phone rang, Kyle shouted out the year it was invented before he said hello.

BEFORE YOU START: Gather a stack of index cards and a list of historic dates (use an encyclopedia or see our list below). On the front of each card, write a significant historic or personal event from the past millennium (for example, the introduction of the Model T Ford, Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, Mom's birth, the loss of Jake's first tooth). Make sure to include events that your elementary schooler has recently studied. Then flip over the card, and on the other side mark the date the event occurred.

HOW TO PLAY: Once your deck is ready, deal five cards to each player, event side up. The object of the game is for each player to arrange his cards in the order in which the events occurred, from oldest to most recent. When everyone has settled on a playing order, check their date smarts. Players get one point for each correct placement; at the end of the game, the person with the most points wins.

Tip: Need some help gathering dates? It's easier than you'd think to get a historic time line, especially if you have access to the Internet (try www.historychannel.com, for example). Or, just use our handy time line.

A CARDPLAYER'S HISTORY OF THE MILLENNIUM

1000 Leif Eriksson explores North America
1215 Magna Carta signed
1452 Leonardo da Vinci born
1492 Columbus sails that ocean blue
1616 Shakespeare dies
1620 Pilgrims hit Plymouth Rock
1773 Boston Tea Party
1837 John Deere introduces the steel plow
1863 Gettysburg Address
1866 Dynamite manufactured
1876 Telephone invented
1879 Lightbulb patented
1903 First powered flight by the Wright Brothers
1908 Model T Ford introduced
1912 Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage from England
1914 WWI starts
1920 Women win the right to vote
1927 The first talking movie premieres
1945 WWII ends
1946 Electronic computer invented
1961 President John F. Kennedy inaugurated
1963 Martin Luther King, Jr., gives "I Have a Dream" speech
1967 First successful heart transplant operation
1969 Men walk on the moon
1977 STAR WARS premieres
1983 Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space