We have been enjoying learning all about The Great Fire of London. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
We loved imagining what it would have been like to have been alive during the Great Fire of London. We used the senses word mat to think about what we would have heard, seen, smelt and touched.
When writing, we turned the lights off in our classroom and listened to a roaring fire to get a feel of the sounds we might have heard from the burning fire.
Afterwards, we thought about how we would use our senses words within a sentence.
“I would hear people shouting and dogs barking,” said Joshua.
“I would get all my things from my room and run outside,” said Jack.
“I would feel sweaty and hot,” said Florence.
“The houses burnt because they were made from wood and were dry from the hot summer,” said Lily.
“They made a firebreak to stop the fire spreading,” said Cameron.
We thought about how we know all the information we do about the Great Fire of London because Thomas Farriner isn’t alive today to say if it was or wasn’t his bakery on Pudding Lane where the fire started. We looked at old newspaper clippings, pictures, maps and diary entries. We have particularly focused on Samuel Pepys diary. All of these artefacts tell us information about what it was like and what people did.
Ask your child to tell you three facts about the Great Fire of London.