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!

Yes and they had leather buckets to make a fire chain from the river to the streets.They had water squirters and they used fire hooks to pull down houses to create a fire break.

They set fire to the kids???

I just meant that they’re generally not scared by the idea of fires, they love that sort of thing!

Yawn.

@Nopenott0day They weren’t as important as the Great fire of London in terms of town planning, St Paul’s cathedral and other important changes in how buildings were constructed. As others said, this event was important nationally and London matters.

Yes we do and I would be over the moon if one of my students brought that in!!

yes, yes they did.

Best way to teach them.

It's actually a misconception (one that I held for ages!) that the GFoL got rid of the plague https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/myths-great-fire-london/

Surely there other history that's more age appropriate?

I think at some point we need to accept that children grown, and that you can't treat them like babies. There's nothing inappropriate in history really, just don't go into details - that would be unnecessary and inappropriate. Or there's nothing appropriate about History, depends how you look at it 😂

You don't need to be religious to have seen a Cross, at any age, crucifixion is a heavy one!

Primary school kids rushing to get their certificate from "The Monument" is one of the highlights of the year of the kids local-ish to London

It’s because it’s so easy to make cross curricular links with and makes teachers lives easier. It also captures the imagination of the kids which a lot of historical events fails to do.

Ds3 is doing the gunpowder plot now but I think his mind was wandering.

He excitedly told me about how Guy Fawkes tried to blow up London by putting bombs underneath it...and that's why it's called BOMB-fire night 🤔😂

Same here - mummified a ragdoll! Also did GFoL and took DD up the Monument in London. I think Egypt was more gory than the fire - wasn't there only one death?

That's actually pretty good thinking 😂

He buried a cheese c’mon it’s gold!

They weren’t as important as the Great fire of London in terms of town planning, St Paul’s cathedral and other important changes in how buildings were constructed.

And the proposals put forward by Evelyn, Wren and others for a completely new street layout, with wide, straight boulevards.

Having Pepys (and Evelyn) opens up discussion on the importance of contemporary, eyewitness accounts as opposed to hearsay.

The plague wasn't just in London. It was raging in Deptford, where John Evelyn lived, and in most places round the Kent coast. And Eyam in Derbyshire, of course. And elsewhere.

It’s absolutely fine- DS did it last year and loved it. It’s very teachable- a few key dates and facts, teaches about a time London looked very different, tells them about how modern London came in to being and nicely introduces the Stuart monarchy, Samuel Pepys etc, and captures their imagination. It’s a great school topic!

Used to be a mad afternoon doing the house burning . Children would be cheering and the Principal would arrive with a bucket of water wearing a fire man’s helmet. Not allowed to do it anymore now 😔 I bet all the children remember it though .

My son did it, they used it as a theme across the whole curriculum, English - diary writing (how do we know what happened, can we pretend we are there watching and write our own diary), geography (why did it burn so quickly, what do our towns look like to stop it happening again), science (what do you need to make a fire). Never ending inspo for art. I was surprised how much they were able to utilise the theme

It was only when I read a third comment from a poster referencing setting fire to them in the playground that I realised “them” is the cardboard houses and not the children! I couldn’t work out if it was some kind of pretend game or they wore some special educational heatproof suits from the fire brigade or something, but no one else on the thread was questioning setting fire to “them”!

The curriculum hasn’t changed in 15 years? My DD is at uni now and did the GFoL when she was in year 1. We went to the Museum of London to see its exhibit on the subject.

My DS did this in year 1, over 24 years ago, we went to The British Museum and had a very knowledgeable young member of staff tell the story of The Fire of London, appropriate to 5/6 year olds. Then we went and looked at the exhibits from that time including a letter from the diary of Samuel Pepys.

I used to work by Monument and every day there were infant children coming to visit it. They would go up to the top and then have their pic taken pointing at the sign for Pudding Lane. They always looked like they were having fun.

Yes, to a class of 30 5 year olds. I'd say that's hard work whatever they're teaching.

Tbh I don't have to do homework on that so 🤣🤣🤣

Tbh I don't have to do homework on that so 🤣🤣🤣