DutchInLaw

                                                            Vlaardingen Museum The Vlaardingen Museum was a perfect first visit for our museum year. Not too big, not too small -- we took about an hour to walk through all three floors. Not too simplistic, not too complicated -- there were scavenger hunts for the kids and displays at eye height, but also multiple exhibits with audio or video options with interviews and explanations by the archaeologists, artists, or sailors.  A little fleet of ships With three kids wanting to explore everything fast ( "Only walk! We're not in a hurry!" ) we moved through at a fairly brisk pace. (Except when we couldn't find the ships for one scavenger hunt, because we were on the wrong floor. And except for when I wanted to do the other scavenger hunt, which had harder que...

I'm gearing up for our Museum Year with small people. We've got snacks and water bottles, phone and camera and power bank, rain jackets and sunscreen... all the usual suspects.  But these aren't just day trips , they're museum trips . The kids already have their favorites that we've learned about, but we're not going to take the train to Amsterdam or The Hague just to see two paintings -- and then immediately head home. Then again, they're kids, and I don't expect them to progress calmly and intellectually past 2000+ works of art while making grad school level notes. So what's in between? What would make a museum trip memorable without being too fact heavy or too shallow? I looked up museum activities for kids. The Rijksmuseum has an art bag (pencils, notebooks, and prompt items), as well as audio tours (including one with stuffed animals). Mauritshuis has art workshops for different age groups, with actual art lessons or DIY crafts that tie into wor...

 I'm emptying out my cupboards of school supplies, craft boxes, puzzles, science kits-- and there is now a huge mess on our table, and multiple piles of donation/trash items by our door.  It's summer, time for a fresh start. I want to be out having fun and not shoving miniature dinosaurs and ripped papers in the cupboard to deal with later. I'm looking forward to bike rides in the sunshine. Getting piles of books from the library and reading them at the playground. Picking strawberries from our garden.  We're getting the Museum Card this year, and train passes for July. I'm beyond excited at the upcoming adventures. More time out learning and exploring, less time dealing with vacation boredom. The kids are older and have longer attention spans, and loved Leiden's Boerhaave museum and the Prinsenhof in Delft. I'm hoping to revisit those, plus add in famous new places like Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, Leiden's Museum of Antiquities, Rot...