My Spanish class lesson plan is a timeline too. I could use the timeline idea to teach some use of Excel, as well. To do that, I would start the lesson out by having everyone write out the dates they want to put in the timeline, together with any information they want to associate with the dates, in a notebook before they start working with Excel. Then I would have them open a new, blank Excel worksheet, write in a title, put the dates in horizontal cells, put the information in the cells above the dates, then format everything to get angled text, colors, bullet points, arrows, whatever else would make the dates more meaningful and easier to remember.
I chose a timeline because I believe it is a useful tool to give an easy visual aspect to the progress of history, whether through epochs or just through what they did that morning.
I got the instructions for this idea from the Microsoft website, at

http://www.microsoft.com/education/CreateTimeline.aspx