The Netherlands

I am positive I have way more fun than the kids do for our annual Geography Fair.  It takes all I have not to be totally in charge and put my little fingers into all the aspects of it!  I do my best to let them do most of the work.  But, it is soooo hard.  I just love it so much!

Anyway, this year we chose The Netherlands.  We had just gotten through reading Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates and I had just read Windmills of War.  Both books were set in the Netherlands so it seemed an obvious choice.

We learned so much about the country just by reading the books.  Things like much of the country is below sea level hence the need for so many dikes and windmills.  The dikes to keep the water from coming further inland and one of the original purposes of windmills was to pump water.

Did you know that tulips are not native to the Netherlands but they are from Turkey.  And tulip is a Turkish word for crown or something like that.  Cheese is as staple in many of their meals and there are almost as many bikes as people.  Holland is a region of the Netherlands.

Boop built a windmill out of Legos but I forgot to take a picture of it.  I thought it was super cool!  Hubby was on a call a couple of weeks before the fair and he noticed a man had a pair of wooden shoes in his garage. He asked the man if he could buy them and the man said sure.  So, we had a pair of wooden shoes to display.  Up until fairly recently, the people of the area actually wore them.  Much like steel toed boots.

All of the people that attended the Geography Fair were given a colorful map of the world.  On that map were places to put dots on the countries that had been "visited."  The kids had a great time going around to each display and trying to figure out where the country was on their map.

We all had a great time.  We look forward to participating again next year . . .