London Calling (the fire department)

 I think I've mentioned before that we emphasize history a lot in our homeschool. I think that's one of the most important subjects because it completely shapes your worldview. So, we study a lot of history. Right now we're in the middle of the 17th Century. As we've been making our way through the history of the world over the past couple of years I keep saying to myself, "Now this is my favorite part of history", but then we progress and I enjoy reading about another part of history. It's all pretty fascinating as far as I'm concerned.  But, this week we've been back in England (after a sojourn in the Far East), learning about King Charles I who was so bad they chopped off his head. The ringleader of that coup was Oliver Cromwell who then came to power and said he wasn't king, only Lord Protector, but he was pretty bad too, and when Charles II (son of Charles I) came out of exile, the Brits were quite happy to have a true monarchy again.  But then, tragedy struck first in the form of the Plague, which at its height was killing up to 7,000 people weekly. Then, on the heels of that came the Great Fire where 80% of London was burned.  That was started by a small coal that leaped unnoticed from the stove of a baker on Pudding Lane.  Because the houses were so tightly packed together, the fire spread like... like... wildfire. (forgive me for that) Anyhow, we did a little burning of London activity to see just how the fire spread.

First we colored a bunch of row houses and glued them together and then made a street down the middle. It's kind of hard to see here.

And then we lit it on fire. Bubba, of course, was absolutely beside himself. He loves fire and loves to play in fire. And got very mad at me when I wouldn't let him. (I know, I know, I am a horrible mother. I also refuse to let my children play with poisonous spiders and snakes. "Completely over-protective" they call me.)

So, we watched London burn and talked about how it's nice that the houses in our neighborhood are not touching so if there was a fire.... "yeah, but Mom, the fence is so close that that could catch on fire and then the next house could burn.... and then what if there was wind and that would carry burning pieces.... so our neighborhood really could burn down". (You can guess who that was. My budding lawyer. You know what he does? We'll be doing grammar and he'll come across something that doesn't make sense to him in one of the exercises and he'll argue with me about it. It's like, "But Mom, why is  Ken doing that? He shouldn't be doing that. I don't understand." and I'm telling him, "It doesn't matter what Ken's doing! They just want you to find the noun in the sentence. Find the noun!")  So, anyhow, that's what history was about today.