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...

 October 2021 Quick post about October to catch up on our months! We had Picasso, Tchaikovsky, and space themes. For Picasso, we read library books and did an art craft.    Picasso book For Tchaikovsky we listened to the 1812 overture (and I think the Nutcracker suite?) and wrote a report on the composer himself.  We had a mini-coop class with some fellow learners, which gave us the excuse to really have fun with the space theme. An astronaut 'hand scanner' by the door, edible marshmallow constellations, create your own planet and rocket crafts... am of course some Star Wars music playing in the background. 

For the sake of planning, fun, and sanity, we're working with unit studies this year for music/Bible/art/science. Pippin still has his normal 2nd grade workbooks: Explode the Code for reading/writing, Developmental Math for math, and Thinking Skills for spatial development, as well Dutch group 3/4 workpages for language. And we have Mystery of History for history, and an ample supply of library books and chapter readers. But our electives have been more random over the last year or so, so having the unit studies planned out is extra fun for all of us. Especially now that Bloom is in preschool 3/4 and is ready for more than wooden puzzles or scribbling on coloring pages. And knowing there is a new little one on the way, it makes me feel better to be preparing easy crafts or making library lists for late-pregnancy-life or newborn-life times when I just don't have the energy to sit at the table and check workbooks.... For January, our themes were:  Bible: Creation, Adam and Eve Ar...

If you can't find something online... try making it yourself.  I love the canva.com website for making my own printables when I can't find what I need somewhere else. In this case it was all-in-one pages of 12 top composers, artists, and science unit studies for this year. I already had some printouts from various websites for those areas, but all the loose pieces of paper floating around and a lack of a central list meant that we weren't as consistent last year in our unit studies as I wanted to be. We listened to classical musical occasionally, checked out some library books on famous artists, and had nature walks and watched science movies, and that was all good! But this year, with Bloom and Pippin a year older, some extra structure should help us learn more effectively and have fun along the way. And since we're expecting a third little human to arrive at our home this summer, I am allll about organizing now while I still have energy and time! Another change I made...

Not everyone finds books delicious, but a lot of us do. And if you're a homeschooler, or a homeschooling parent, you likely find books ESPECIALLY delicious. Sadly, the price of living and inflation and food goes up... and the price of books doesn't go down. Sometimes I give silent screams when I walk into a store here in Holland, turn over a cute little board book, and find that it costs 8 euros. For a board book that will probably be chewed on for a year or two before it's past repair. A 'normal' paperback easily costs 10-15 euros, so keeping up a book habit can get pricey, and the quality of books matters more. (At least, the internal quality of books mattes; half of the books we own are second-hand, which is why we can afford so many books :D :D :D). We also have library passes at not one but three libraries in the region, and regularly check out our limit for the kids (ten books per pass). In 2020, the estimated population size of the Netherlands is about 17 mil...

When I first started 'practicing' homeschool with Pippin, I had high hopes but not a lot of context. What could a 2.5 year old learn? What would they enjoy? I read about some children who could read at 3 years old, others who didn't learn until 6 but were strong in other areas. I hoped to use the Sonlight homeschool curriculum once Pippin got older, but the teachers guide and books started from the 3/4 Preschool year. At two and a half years old, he fell more under the category 'totschooling'. So I focused on materials that would be a fun and casual introduction to letters, numbers, and the world around him. I wasn't ready to commit to a curriculum or materials that would be expensive or exhausting, especially if homeschooling didn't work well for us. I also didn't have much of a budget, or access to homeschooling communities from our home in the Netherlands. What I did have was plenty of free time, a working printer, and fast internet. So I started s...

When I was homeschooled, my mother was fairly dependent on physical books; the Internet had only just been invented. Since we lived overseas, she ordered an English, faith-based curriculum called Sonlight. It was a fantastic fit for our family at the time, and I assumed I would use it if I ever wanted to teach my own kids. In January 2017, when Pippin was about two and a half years old, I decided to start our own homeschooling journey. The mandatory school age here in Holland is 5, and at that point a child either needs to be enrolled in school or have official exemption ( vrijstelling ) from the government. D and I discussed everything - in depth, read up on the laws, and talked with other homeschooling families here. Whatever the future held, we decided that starting early would give us time to see if homeschooling was a good fit for us. I did hours of research, and found that the Sonlight curriculum starts at preschool, for three and four year olds. During our last trip to the US...

I hesitate while filling in the website form. Me, a teacher? I was looking for a free download, not a psychological cross-examination. I'm browsing a resources website while Pippin naps. By entering simple information like my email address and a little about myself, I get access to free downloads like coloring pages and preschool 'printables'.   It only takes a few seconds to fill in my info, down to the last question or two. A few simple clicks will get me to the downloads page I'm looking for. The part that's making me pause is the dropdown box with, "I teach___ " and then a drop-down menu. The choices range from pre-K to homeschool to adult education. There's also a simple "I don't teach" option.