Year 6 vist Down House, the home of Charles Darwin

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Report by Alex
On  the 11th of October Year 6 went to Down House in Orpington, the home of Charles Darwin. It took us about an hour to get there and we were all excited to go.

When we got there we went up to a room where we would have lunch and where we could put our bags. Then we went into the garden and into Darwin’s greenhouse.  There were a variety of plants like Venus Fly Traps and Cactuses. After that we went down to his laboratory and the observation centre. There were bees in the observation centre and we were told that the Queen Bee had a blue mark on her (but it was impossible to find).

When we returned to the house we were split into Groups; one group went downstairs and the other upstairs. The group that went downstairs went into the dining room first. One of the volunteers said that at 1 o'clock the whole family would come down even if they were doing something important they would all eat together. Upstairs the other group went into a room with a video of Darwin's relatives and historians talking about him. We also had the opportunity to dress in the clothes that he and his wife and children would have worn. The next room was the Billiard Room where there were pictures of Darwin and a billiard table. Upstairs we saw the original notebooks that Darwin had written in and a model of HMS Beagle.

Then it was time for lunch after we switched activities; the downstairs group went upstairs and the upstairs group went downstairs. 

It was almost time to come back to school so we went outside for a run around and discovered Darwin’s Worm Hill where he and his son discovered that worms were moving the soil. The experiment took over two years! 

We had a great time there. Thank you to Steve for driving, Mrs Fontanelli and Mrs Burden for accompanying us on the trip and many thanks to Mr Norton for organising it.