Sheep class have really loved learning all about the Great Fire of London so far this term in their history lessons. Having started the unit by being history detectives and scrutinising the primary source materials, children have since been finding out about why the fire spread so quickly and what methods were used to try and control the fire. Samuel Pepys’ diary has been a great source of information for this! The class decided that the strong winds and the fact that the houses were made of wood were probably the most important reasons. They did not agree that creating firebreaks by pulling down buildings was a good idea, because they thought it was mean of the rich people to make the poorer people go homeless. We were very impressed by their independent thoughts on all of this!

We have also now started writing our own stories in English about an escape from the great fire (or another type of disaster!), inspired by the beautiful book we have been reading: ‘The Great Fire of London’ by Emma Adams:

In science, we decided that we needed to find the firefighters some better equipment (“They’ll get so wet using those old water carts!”), so we are going to be testing some materials to see if they are waterproof or absorbent and then decide which would be suitable for making a fireman’s suit.