Friday, October 30, 2009

The Netherlands, Part 2

Let me first officially apologize for taking so long to post part 2. I'm finding it difficult to get everything done and still have time for blogging. I'm sure I'll find a routine that works though, so don't give up on me!

And now, back to the Netherlands, as promised!

In our Hero Tales books, we read about Menno Simons, the man who started the Mennonites - his story is very interesting and Z-Man found it more so since we have Mennonites living in our area and he has asked about them before. We also read about Corrie ten Boom and we both found her story fascinating and inspiring - especially when she and her sister thanked God for the fleas in the concentration camp because it meant they could read their bible without interference from the soldiers. Oh my! Her home is a museum now and you can look at it here.

We studied Van Gogh during our time in the Netherlands because he was born there and, well, France is already pretty full with the Impressionists. We enjoyed this book:

and spent some time just studying some of his paintings. We also attempted some Van Gogh projects. I'll tell you about the successful one first.

I went through some of my home magazines and pulled out full page pictures of rooms - preferably some with a little wall space. Then I called the boys in and, armed with these stickers:


I said, "this is a very pretty room, but I think it could really use a Van Gogh, don't you?" and I stuck one on the wall. It was very funny to me to see where they thought a Van Gogh would look nice (particularly Little Man) - there was one over a dog bed, one on some kitchen cabinets, one on a dust ruffle - but they had a good time!

On a different day, we attempted to imitate Van Gogh's Starry Night painting using oil pastels on black paper. For some reason, neither boy was into this. At all. sigh. Some days are just like that. But don't worry! I didn't let that keep me from doing my own! And at the end of the week, we did the project at our co-op and it went MUCH better.

Here are the masterpieces of Ellie, Emily and Marylyn (1st/2nd grade). Aren't they beautiful?!













































Lastly, we watched some online videos of the Netherlands that we found on Jolanthe's wonderful blog, Homeschool Creations. She and her family are also studying the countries of the world but they are much further along in their journey, having started last year. There are SOOOO many great ideas - plan to spend some time if you head over there.

And now, off to Spain!

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for your post. I came upon it while doing a Google search. We are reading Hans Brinker and studying the Netherlands currently and I really appreciate your ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much! I'm so glad it's helping you!

    ReplyDelete