This week, Year 2 were very lucky to be able to visit the Florence Nightingale Museum in central London. After a journey on the Underground, we had lovely sunny views of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. In the museum, we met Florence Nightingale herself, who told us her fascinating story about her early life and how she transformed hospitals during the Crimean War. The children could remember what they had already learned about Florence during our humanities lessons and participated really well in the workshop, playing lots of different jobs to help Florence in the Scutari Hospital! We were interested to learn that all the paintings of Florence depicted her with a candle lamp, but in fact she carried a Turkish lamp called a fanoos.
We had the opportunity to walk around the museum, looking for special objects that were important to Florence, like her pet owl Athena and the Scutari Hospital sash. The children were able to dress up in soldiers’ and nurses’ uniforms, and saw Florence’s bedroom from her later life. Florence then taught the children the similarities and differences between nurse’s uniforms and equipment in Victorian times compared with today. It was an extremely informative day and the children behaved excellently!
Zavaar said, “My favourite part was dressing as a Crimean soldier.”
Aaila said, “I didn’t know about Florence’s lamp before.”
Raphael said, “I liked looking through the little windows to see the pictures and listening to the sound clips.”
Categories: Educational Visit
