Famous people in the past - Grace Darling

This afternoon we were developing our historical enquiry skills as we learnt about a famous person from the past, Grace Darling. First we talked about what we mean by 'history' and 'the past' and understood that we were going to be learning about someone who lived nearly two hundred years ago. Then we talked about what 'famous' means. We learnt that if you are famous lots of people know who you are. We looked at some pictures of famous people including One Direction and Queen Elizabeth II and talked about who they are and why they are famous.

Then we looked at the first part of our picture of Grace Darling to see what clues there were that could tell us why she is famous.

We said: "Maybe she's famous for building a boat" (Trystan), "Maybe she rowed across the sea" (Grace), "She's a good rower" (Harry).

Then we looked at the next part of the picture to see if it could give us some more clues.

We said: "She lives in a lighthouse" (Matthew), "She might be going to the lighthouse" (Jamie), "When it's dark everyone on boats can see in the dark" (Hope).

Then we looked at the last part of the picture and talked about what we thought was happening.

We said: "Maybe she's going to help the crew and the captain" (Lucy), "She's come from the sinking boat and she swam to the little boat" (Rhys), "Maybe she crashed into the boat by accident and it's sinking" (Harry).

Miss Ayres told us the story of Grace Darling and we watched an interactive video that told us the story of how she and her father went out in their boat to rescue some people who were left clinging to rocks after their boat was damaged in a storm. We agreed that it must have been a dangerous and frightening thing to do, and she must have been very brave to do it. Her brave actions made her famous - even Queen Victoria heard about it!

In our Play and Learn time we explored what we had learnt in different ways. We made lighthouses on the making table, re-enacted the story of Grace's bravery in the water tray with boats and playmobile people, watched a video of someone pretending to be Grace Darling telling us the story of what happened, drew and painted pictures showing parts of the story, looked at a book about Grace Darling and one about lifeboat crews, and read the stories The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch and The Lighthouse Keeper's Picnic.

"We had cardboard tubes. We had to paint them. I used red and white." (Olivia)

"We put yellow paint on top of the cup for the light." (Matthew)

"We played with the playmobile people. Some people saved the other people." (Lilly)

"I was pretending there was a storm and there were loads of people on boats." (Aaron)

"There were people that needed to be saved because they fell from the rocks into the water." (Harry)

"I'm painting the sea and the waves." (Maddie)

"I'm doing the lightning storm." (Rhys)