What a fantastic day Years Four, Five and Six had visiting Tower Bridge! This visit supported our learning in Geography and DT. In Geography, our focus is Rivers so it was wonderful to see the lower course of the River Thames for ourselves. We were lucky that the sun shone so we were even able to enjoy our lunch outside whilst watching the boats on the river.
As part of our day, we took part in a bridge building workshop. We learnt that Tower Bridge is three types of bridge in one: it is a bascule bridge, a suspension bridge and a beam bridge. It was built about 130 years ago and took eight years to build. During our workshop, we had to work as a team using Meccano to build a bridge – it had to be tall enough to let a boat through and stable enough to stand on its own. We learnt that we could make our bridge stronger by including triangles within our designs.
We also had a guided tour of the bridge – from the high walkways to the dark engine rooms. From the walkways, we had a fantastic view of the London skyline and also of the river below. Both walkways have a glass floor which were quite scary to walk on!
As usual, it was an absolute pleasure to take the children out for the day; their behaviour was exemplary, their enthusiasm was infectious and their manners impeccable.