Life Stages Timeline¶
Specification¶
The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 2: Growth and Development Across Cultures.
Type: timeline
**sim-id:** life-stages-timeline<br/>
**Library:** vis-timeline<br/>
**Status:** Specified
Bloom Taxonomy: Understand (L2)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: explain, describe, interpret
Learning objective: Students explain that puberty is one normal life stage among several across a human lifespan, and describe its general place and range in that sequence.
Purpose: Normalize puberty by placing it visually alongside other widely recognized life stages, with no anatomical imagery anywhere in the diagram.
Time period: Birth through adulthood (ages 0-25, approximate)
Orientation: Horizontal
Life stage segments shown (labeled bands, not individual people):
- Infancy (0-2)
- Early Childhood (2-8)
- Puberty / Adolescence (approximately 8-16, shown as a wide band to represent normal variation in timing)
- Later Adolescence (approximately 15-19)
- Adulthood (approximately 18+)
Visual style: Horizontal band timeline with soft color blocks for each stage; the Puberty/Adolescence band is intentionally wide and shows a gradient edge rather than a hard line, visually reinforcing that its start and end vary by person
Color coding: Each life stage has its own soft, calm color; no skin tones or body imagery anywhere
Interactive features:
- Click any life-stage band to open an infobox with a two-sentence, non-anatomical description of that stage
- Click the Puberty/Adolescence band specifically to reveal: "This band is wide on purpose — puberty can start anywhere in this range, and every starting point is normal."
- Hover over the gradient edges of the Puberty/Adolescence band to see the note "Exact start and end times are different for everyone."
Implementation: vis-timeline with custom-styled bands and click-to-reveal infobox panels; no anatomical or body imagery of any kind — purely abstract colored bands and labels.