Off to the Netherlands

Today we visited a new country as part of our international month world tour. We were very lucky to have a mommy come to class later in the morning who used to live in this country in Europe; The Netherlands. On the tables this morning we saw the pots of soils and the spring flower bulbs which we started to pot yesterday. Some of us missed this yesterday and so today we had the chance to do the rest. We again chose which kind of flowers we wanted to grow and put the bulbs into the soil to start growing. Also on the table we saw two more of the red pegboards that we added nails to yesterday and several of us had the chance to use the hammers with the small nails. The two finished peg-boards were on the table ready to be used with the colored elastic bands. We were able to make lots and lots of shapes using the elastic bands. The play travel agency and pilots chairs on the play airplane were also very popular this morning with many of us taking flights abroad. On the main table there were also lots of cards which we sorted into categories including: fruit, tools, animals that fly, land animals, ocean creatures and vegetables. On the carpet the toy crane and foam blocks were also popular and we made a beautiful castle to play with. We soon had our snack and headed for the park early today. It was cold outside and quite gray but we soon warmed up running and chasing our friends. In the green area we played bowling and took turns trying to knock over the bowling pins. As soon as we returned to the classroom one of our moms Karin arrived to introduce us to Holland / The Netherlands. Karin and her husband used to live in the Netherlands and had lots to show us and tell us. We saw the flag for the Netherlands and saw how the level of the water is much higher than the level of the land. This means that they need to keep the water back using dykes. The Dutch engineers have built some very big machines to help keep the water away. We learnt how Holland is very famous for windmills which they use for many purposes and for tulips which are the national flower of Holland. We are going to make an origami tulip this afternoon with the instruction sheet and origami paper Karin kindly gave to us. Several of us chose the color orange which is good as it is the most popular color in Holland too. We also learnt all about the language ‘Dutch and how to say Hello (Hallo), Goodbye (Daag), and Thank you (Dank U). The most famous kinds of food in Holland are: croquettes, herring and cheese. We also saw how the people dress in Holland and were then very surprised to see they wear wooden shoes called ‘clogs’. We tried a pair on and they looked very funny! We then saw what the houses in Amsterdam look like and then we were very lucky to build our own little model of Amsterdam using some model houses, Lego bridges and paper canals. It looked really good and we thought it looked just like the pictures of Amsterdam. Holland has a famous painter called Vincent Van Gogh who painted lots of pictures. We saw a beautiful sunflower picture by Vincent Van Gogh who was an impressionist painter. His favorite color was yellow and when we looked at the painting it made us all feel ‘Happy’. We are going to try our own ‘Sunflower’ picture tomorrow morning in class which should be lots of fun. Have a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow.

All our love, Darren, Ayaka, Pooja and Ryoan