Summer holidays

Summer holidays

The Dutch take a relatively pragmatic view to the issue of school summer holidays, and stagger them across the country. School holidays are set nationally, though some of the dates are only advisory and individual schools can choose their own. But the summer ones are...
Vakantiebieb

Vakantiebieb

Dutch public libraries have an annual offer, where for the months of July and August they provide a pre-defined list of ebooks freely available for all library members. These books are all in Dutch, but they cover a variety of age groups (from 4yo to adult) and a...
art journals

art journals

All four of us have our own art journal. It’s a place to do stuff that gets kept. (I must admit that pretty much all other children’s art gets binned…eventually. Some of it gets displayed first.) It’s a place to try out different techniques and...
Plant identifications

Plant identifications

What’s the first thing you do when you have a new house? Go round the garden and identify what new plants you have, of course! (Well, actually first we picked the ripe fruits and have even made our first batch of homemade jam and relish from it.) We are lucky to...

“I never thought…”

Last week I intervened with another child in what was potentially a life-threatening situation. The parents were not within view, and the child was being a bit silly. I’m not going to go into detail, as nothing did happen, but there are a number of lessons I...
Buying a house Dutch style

Buying a house Dutch style

We have just bought our second house in the Netherlands. It’s just round the corner from where we now live, and even closer to the children’s school. So we are very happy and looking forward to moving there and not moving again! But first we have some...

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