Great Fire of London in Year 1

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So this weekend it'll be helping my 5 year olds make cardboard houses and then lots of pretend fire burning them down. With my eldest we did a big picture with lots of tissue paper fire and I can honestly say it still feels like such an odd thing to teach 5 year olds about.
Why is it still such a big thing on the primary school curriculum? I just don't really see why we need to be taxing 5 year olds about how London burned down once!
Aibu? Surely there other history that's more age appropriate? I know it's all a big gory etc but I just feel like more sensitive kids might get really disturbed by so much talk about burning houses!

You are absolutely correct.

The fire destroyed parish records, many people's births or existence had never even been written down and it was so hot that bones were effectively cremated.

Historians believe it is no doubt that dozens if not hundreds of people were killed by the Fire.

Interesting, thank you.

Haha same!

I mean, it’s history! A very important part of our history. I don’t think anyone has had any trauma so far by learning about it. The teachers know what they’re doing

Kids actually love the gory bits of history, it’s why Horrible Histories and the spin off Gory Games is so popular.

Teacher's don't get to choose the curriculum, it's dictated by the DfE. Teachers teach it.

If teachers designed it, I can assure you it wouldn't contain fronted adverbials be so mind-numbingly boring at times!

GFoL, though, is bloody brilliant and year 1 love it!

I don’t remember much else about primary history being especially London-centric but like it or not it’s our capital, our seat of government, the financial centre, etc etc.

We just went through this and the plague. Ik dd found it interesting as both came up at home.

I knew it

Hats off to the teachers , though.
Teaching primary school - I couldn't do that job, so thank you to those of you who do!
👏

Do the still do Richard III in Yr 7/8?

My youngest got a shoe box, filled it with soil, chopped up a small rubber glow in the dark skeleton and buried in said soil. Poured plaster of paris on the top and painted it to look like a car park. Then took a couple of toffee hammers to school with it to excavate. Sheer excellence.

I miss the days of helping out with school projects!!!

My 22-year-old is now working and he did it in year one. Poor teachers!

It's a perfect topic to engage year 1's in history, they won't exactly detail anything gory. It amazes me how some parents think.

My 22-year-old is now working and he did it in year one. Poor teachers!
It justs go to show how easy teachers jobs are they just do the same topics every year. My daughter did the same in 2006

Yes, teachers do exactly the same thing year in year out. They don’t need to adapt to the fact children are different even if the topic is the same.

It's great for that age. Try and go the London fire of London walk....we took dd. Great topic and amazing how few died from it

I’m a teacher and when I’ve done this topic before we also combine it with the Great Fire of Newcastle and Gateshead (much more local) of 1854. Adds the local element and can compare and contrast the fire response from 200 years later.

That sounds really interesting.

I don't think there were any fire engines at the gfol..

My son loved Roman Day in yr3. He talked about it for ages afterwards.

I can remember few things from that age, but the TFOL and mount Vesuvius/Pompeii were The Best!!

We did ancient egypt, Tutankhamun and pulling brains out of noses. I don't recall anyone being traumatised (and it was a TINY class, only three other kids in my year group, one of who was a proper wet lettuce and even she was fine).

Oh we did. 70’s child. Pictures of the poor Pompeii victims.
We had a Newsboard in our class. A classmate’s Grandfather was eaten by a crocodile and the Headline of the week was “A’s Grandad Eaten by Crocodile”. I shit you not.

Think again, there were... but they were hand dragged or horse drawn, pumps on wheels possibly buckets and hoses and ladders dangling from them too..

However they weren't overly useful, being too bulky and slow to deploy down narrow streets and difficult to get close to the seat of the fire.

Fires were pretty common and each parish had a responsibilty to have equipment and people to use it, but in built up areas the main tactic was to create firebreaks by demolishing buildings, and then put out fires by passing buckets of water from whatever point one could pump water to.

We teach that to year 1/2. They loved it. Currently on The Gunpowder Plot. I guess you’re not too happy with that either.