Six event cards land on the board in a jumbled order and the class drags them into the order they think is right. When they commit, the real dates are revealed and the cards turn over. Each card carries a picture, pulled in from Wikipedia, so children who are still building their reading stamina have something to reason from as well as a name.
Three routes, and they are not equally useful.
Ready-made sets are the quickest. Pick a surprise mix from right across history, or narrow it to the ancient world, the Middle Ages, explorers and empires, or the modern world. Type a topic and the events are generated for whatever you name. Or type your own six events and the dates and pictures are looked up for you.
That third one is the one to use. A generic set of famous events is a nice starter. Six moments from the unit you have actually been teaching is a lesson.
There are bands from 5 to 7 all the way to 16 to 18, and the choice genuinely changes the cards. The two youngest bands stay on AD dates only and simpler events, so an infant class is never asked to reason about BC and counting backwards. Pick the older bands and BC dates and denser events come in.
I built a set that mixed Roman and Egyptian events on purpose, because children file those two away as separate boxes and they are not. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra were alive at the same time and genuinely met. That surprises a class on its own. Then the other half of it lands: the Great Pyramid was already something like two and a half thousand years old by the time Cleopatra was born. She lived closer to us than she did to the building of the pyramids.
That is the whole point of the lesson. Two things you think of as ancient Egypt can be further apart than one of them is from you.
What I did not expect the first time was how flat they went when the answers came up. They had a lot of cards in the wrong place and they took it as failing. So I explained the maths of it, that if one card is in the wrong spot then something else has to be wrong too, and that getting six in a row right is genuinely unlikely. They perked straight up and wanted another go, and the second round they were arguing properly instead of guessing.
Because the odds are heavily against them, and telling them so changes how they take it. With six cards there are 720 possible orders and exactly one of them is right. It is also impossible to have only one card out of place. If a card is in the wrong spot, at least one other card must be wrong too, because something has to be sitting where it should have gone.
Worth thirty seconds before you reveal. A class that thinks four wrong out of six means they are bad at history will go quiet. A class that knows four wrong is a normal first attempt will argue about why.
Put them in teams and ask each team to agree an order before anyone touches the board. That is the difference between one confident child dragging cards while the rest watch, and a room full of children justifying a decision to each other. The reasoning is where the history is. Someone has to say out loud why they think the pyramids come before the Colosseum, and someone else has to disagree.
The one with a deep love of history who rarely puts a hand up. A timeline is niche knowledge made useful, and it gives that child a reason to speak that a normal question and answer session does not. Watching them become the one their team listens to is the best thing this app does.
Free to try. Dealing a set of cards spends one token, whichever of the three routes you used, because every route builds a real set. Replaying the same ready-made set does not charge again within the window, so a second go at the same cards is free. Every account gets 20 free tokens on signing up.
How do you play a timeline game in class?
Six event cards are dealt in a random order and the class drags them into chronological order. When they commit, the real dates are revealed. It works best with the class in teams, agreeing an order before anyone touches a card.
Can I make a timeline for my own topic?
Yes, and it is the thing most worth using. Type your six event names and the dates and pictures are looked up and the cards built, so the set matches the unit you are teaching rather than being generic history.
Why do children get so many cards in the wrong place?
With six cards there are 720 possible orders and only one is right. It is also impossible to have exactly one card out of place, because whatever is wrong has displaced something else. Say that before you reveal and nobody goes flat.
What age range is it for?
Bands run from 5 to 7 up to 16 to 18. The two youngest stay on AD dates and simpler events, so an infant class is not asked to reason about BC.
Where do the pictures come from?
Each event card pulls its image from Wikipedia at the moment the set is dealt, so the cards have something to look at as well as read.
If chronology is the thing, World Timeline zooms out across the whole span. For the reasoning rather than the dates, try Time Detectives, Map Time Machine, and The Witness.
Written by a practising primary school teacher · checked August 2026