The Great Fire of London: Hands-on learning

20.10.2022

Year 2 girls have been working on the ‘Great Fire of London’.  It is a fantastic topic to learn about, especially as we live so close to London and we will visit the city after half term when we have our outing to the Tate Gallery. 

The morning started with forty very excited Tudor girls and their Tudor-clad adults.  We went to the hall and the girls were able to choose from eight different activities which would have been part of Tudor life.  The girls made candles by dipping string into hot wax, they wrote with a quill pen and ink from an ink well, they made a plait from bread dough and saw first-hand the rudimentary cures available for common ailments in Tudor times!

The girls then went to the playground to enact using fire hooks to pull the buildings down, which was needed to provide a fire break in the bid to halt the fire from spreading further. The girls also made a human chain to act out moving water from the river to where it was needed to put out the fire.

In the afternoon, the girls used their archaeological skills to find artefacts and to try and establish what information could be established from the findings.

Grateful thanks go to all the parents who gave so generously of their time to come and help out and take part in the fun and learning of the day.  Thank you to them for joining in the spirit of the event and dressing up.  It really made a difference to the day.

The day ended with a lot of very tired and excited girls who had really enjoyed their day of learning together.