We have been looking at a range of dates and putting these on a timeline. We looked at how long ago different important dates happened such as the gunpowder plot, the year we were born and the kings coronation.  We looked a a queen Victoria and she reigned in the Victorian era. 

Year  1 have been exploring old and new objects. We have compared old and new toys and panted a range of games, we have also looked at household items and compared them with what we find in our homes and how they have changed.
 

In our mantle we will be learning about the Victorians and the cholera epidemic. We have looked at a range of pictures from the Victorian times and dressed up in their clothes. 

In 1858 the River Thames was giving off a terrible odour that even parliament was cancelled. The Victorians were pouring all their waste into the river and as the summer came it heated up causing a terrible stink across London. 
Here the children are creating the River Thames you will notice that the water is brown. 

There has been an outbreak of cholera across London families are beginning to die. The victorians believed that the smell of the river was causing the illness. We have been advised to carry a handkerchief so that we don’t breath in the smell of the river, bleach the curtains and pour chemicals into the river. 

Faraday tested the water for pollution, he placed white paper in the river and tested for how long he could see the paper. 

People believed that the smell from the River Thames was making everyone ill, they were told they needed to carry around a handkerchief to mask the smell. Lots of people bleached their curtains but people were still dying. 

The pump on broad street was contaminated with cholera. The families that were drinking from the pump were getting ill and dying. 
 

In our mantle story we collected water from a pump. The water had glitter in it to represent cholera we split the families into two side those that had more glitter had a higher amount of cholera in their water. We compared how many people would get ill from the pump.

Joseph Bazellgette needs our help to create a new sewage system we have been exploring everyday materials to decide which one would be the best material. We know that we will not experiment with plastic and this material was not available in the Victorian times 

The poorest families lived on the River Thames banks in Lambeth, they had no money or shoes . There houses were broken and falling apart. The families would drink directly out of the river many of them died. The builders appeared and wanted to start working on London flood defences but the families were trying to stop them. 
 

In our story we debated about the rights and wrongs of knocking down the houses to build the flood defences and make the river narrower. 

when the sewage system was complete the team had an opening ceremony and Queen Victorian opened the sewage system. We celebrated with cake.