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Preferably print the timeline on cardstock rather than regular paper. It'll hold up much better to repeated handling and page turns, especially with younger students.
Once printed, hole punch the pages so they can go in a binder. For the separator pages (the section title pages like "Ancient Times" and "Middle Ages"), you have two options: slide them into plastic page protectors so they stand out and stay protected, or add tabs so students can flip straight to a section.
Don't have access to a printer or want to build your own from scratch? You can make a simpler version of the same timeline by hand.
Buy a pack of cardstock (any craft or office store will have it) and hole punch each sheet along one edge, just like the printed version. If you want to get fancy you could do different colored cardstock for each section. If you don't have access to cardstock, copy paper will word.
Make section dividers. Write the era name and date range, like "Middle Ages, 500 C.E. to 1500 C.E." These act as the section breaks in your binder. Feel free to decorate them in a way that's meaningful for your learner.
For each timeline page, you don't need to draw tick marks or fill in every year in between unless you want to. Just write the starting date in the corner of the left-hand page and the ending date in the corner of the right-hand page. Each paper set (one sheet, front and back) should cover a set number of years depending on the era:
Ancient Times: 500 years per set, so one sheet might read "3000 B.C.E." on the left and "2500 B.C.E." on the right, the next sheet "2500 B.C.E." to "2000 B.C.E.," and so on.
Middle Ages: 50 years per set, for example "500 C.E." on the left and "550 C.E." on the right.
Early Modern: 20 years per set, for example "1500 C.E." on the left and "1520 C.E." on the right.
Modern Times: 10 years per set, for example "1800 C.E." on the left and "1810 C.E." on the right.
The sets get shorter as you move closer to the present, so the timeline visually speeds up the further along it goes, just like the printed version.
Before diving into ancient history, spend a little time making the timeline personal. Have your student add a few dates and events they already know and understand, like their own birth year, when their siblings were born, their parents' birth years, or the birth years of grandparents or other elderly people in their life.
This gives them a reference point they can actually relate to. When they later place something like "3000 B.C.E." on the timeline, they'll have a real sense of just how far back that is compared to their own family history, rather than the date just being an abstract number.
Once they've added their own family's timeline, they can start filling in historical events as they move through each era.
This timeline doesn't have to stop at history class. Encourage your student to keep adding to it over the years, dates and discoveries from science, people and events from literature, current events happening right now, anything they're curious about or excited by. They can even print out small pictures to glue next to entries too. My family loves using a little photo printer like the cannon ivy to print 2x3 pictures on sticker paper. Over time this project becomes more of a keepsake and more a record of what they were learning and thinking about across their whole schooling.
