A Fabtastic trip to the Capital

The idea of a trip to London first came about in November 2021 when class 2 were studying Guy Fawkes. One of the pupils said ‘I’ve never been to London, I’d love to see the Houses of Parliament’.

Throughout the year the capital has formed part of our learning: the pupils enjoyed the Platinum Jubilee celebrations and loved watching the footage of The Trooping of the Colour and the celebration concert, during our Greek Myths theme we talked about democracy, in PSHE we explored diversity and our theme the UK in Summer 2 saw us studying the capitals of the UK as well as seas and rivers.

The trip to London brought all of the learning to life: we stood on Tower Bridge and talked about which sea the Thames flows into, looked at the Houses and Parliament and considered where the Plotters might have taken the barrels of gunpowder, we discussed the diverse range of people we saw and we walked down The Mall and tried to imagine it full of people watching the concert on big screens.

We considered new careers such as being a mounted police officer and one of our pupils aspires to be a Beefeater.

London seemed to be putting on a show for us, we saw a military band wearing Bearskin hats practicing, we saw the changing of the guards at Horse Guards Parade and we saw Boris Johnson’s car arrive at 10 Downing Street!

Pupils found The Tube to be a great adventure with the seemingly endlessly long escalators and the myriad of tunnels, they marvelled at the size and density of the buildings and were amazed at just how many people there were.

Visiting London was a terrific experience for our pupils, enabling them to connect the classroom with real places and real life. It was great to see them enjoy the trip so much and also to take such an interest in everything when they were actually seeing it for the first time. We are sure that will be doing many such trips in the future.