5 Beaches to Visit From The Hague

The school holidays have arrived and the beach is surely on the wish list of every child this summer. The good news is that if you live in or around The Hague you have an excellent choice of beaches to explore. So get your bucket and spades, sun cream and a picnic ready and head off to one of these sandy locations.

Summer Culture Fun for Kids

We're in the home straight now as this school year races to an end. Six weeks of silent alarm clocks, days stetching into each other with no fixed routine and no place to be. For some bliss, for others a scary prospect. But a summer break with a theme and a focus will soon turn any doubting frowns into fun smiles.

We're exploring Germany during some of the holidays but for the majority of the summer break we'll be home in the Netherlands so I've decided to get my children exploring some other places in the world without leaving the house. Well, without leaving the country in any case.

At the beginning of each week we're home I plan to give my three sons a little suitcase with a pack which will help them learn about the culture of one particular country or place. In our case it will be Britain, New York State and Madagascar, the first two because we have family ties to both places. Here's how I plan to go about our summer of culture fun......

Firstly the suitcase will contain:

•  a cover sheet with the country/ place name, map and a blank flag template.

• a basic fact list for the children to discover and fill in over the course of the week: population, nearest country, language spoken there, native language name for the country, most famous landmark, capital city - that type of thing.

• colouring pages related to the country/place.

• a recipe for a national dish - for the children to cook/make during the week.

• instructions to head to the library and borrow books about the place/country.

The suitcase will also include envelopes for them to randomly open with different missions such as these:

1. Find the country/place in an atlas.
2. Paint the national flag. 
3. Make the national flag with iron on beads.
4. What is the climate like there? What would you pack if you were to visit there? Ask them to go pack a bag as if they were going on a trip there. 
5. Find out about an animal that lives there which you can't find in the Netherlands. Write a few lines about it. Cut out pictures of what it eats. Draw the animal. Use playdough to make the animal. Make a painting. The possibilities are endless!
6. What food is a speciality there? 
7. What sport do they play there? Ask the children to try and play the game i. The garden or at the local park. Improvise if you don't have exactly the right tools.
8. Complete a jigsaw puzzle that has the country/place in it (we have puzzles of Europe). Take a picture of the country, print it out and stick it on the fact sheet.
9. Listen to some music from the country. Dance. Try and learn a few steps from the national dance if there is one.
10. Learn to count to five in the local language. 
11. Send a postcard to someone in the country. 
12. What is the national currency? 
13. Watch a YouTube video about the country.
14. Play a game online relevant to the country.
15. Do a word search. You can find word search generators online so you can create your own and make it as easy or as difficult as necessary.
16. Do a craft.
17. What national holidays are celebrated? 

All activities and questions can be made age appropriate. My eldest is 8 but spends little time on the computer at home and tends to use it in school for Dutch language and maths related activities so it will be good for him to use the internet to find out facts. You can be as creative as you like - for example if there are volcanoes in your chosen country you could use an experiment to bring some volcanic action to your garden.

Bring in history and social studies for older children, talk about the difficulties the country faces. The possibilities are endless!  

I will also suggest they contact family and friends to ask for help with different questions about New York State and Britain. 

I've set up a Pinterest board called Summer Culture Fun where resources will be collated - anyone wanting to join in let me know and I will add you as a pinner.  

Setting the Counter to Zero: A Real Summer Break

Six weeks came and went and the children are now back in school. The summer holidays flew by but we wrung every drop of fun we could out of them before a new school year takes us in its grip.

We spent nearly four weeks in England, most of that in Cornwall. We saw planes, trains and stock cars. We spent time on sandy beaches, time in the countryside and time in stately houses. We witnessed jousting knights, scaled castle walls, collected glimmering shells, played in the rock pools and built dams on the beach. We ate fish and chips, bacons sandwiches, crumpets and enjoyed many an ice cream. The boys added countless words to their English vocabulary list and played with lots of British children. We had a fabulous summer holiday.

Then we had two weeks at home which we kept quiet and low key, particularly after a bad bout of man-flu hit the man of the house and put him in bed for the best part of a week. And today a new school year begins. And we are ready for it. We are refreshed. Ready for the routine. Ready to work again.

I have taken a break from the blog over the summer. In fact, I took a break from all things writing, except for journal entries and one article about school uniforms, or rather the lack of them in my life. Hopefully, none of you noticed as I worked my butt off in July to schedule weekly posts and keep new posts popping up. But it does mean I have a head full of ideas, blog posts and general musings. But all in good time.

One thing that hit me over the head hard this summer was that time is moving at an alarming pace. My eldest has started in group 4 today and with a new teacher and a new classroom my little HSC was a little stressed. In a month or so my youngest will turn three. One more year at home with me before he also starts school. My middle son continues finding his feet in group 1, but this school year in a smaller group than that of the last term of the last school year and hopefully with a little more continuity. In one way or another, they need my support to get through these first few weeks back at school.

Before the summer break I had started putting more time into this blog, taking on more monthly writing commitments and I took pleasure in watching the blog grow. But I plan to take my foot of the accelerator a little. Just a little. I'm a mama first. And I have enjoyed that feeling over the summer holiday. The calmness of no conflicts with my time - beating myself up about whether to spend time with my boys or to slip off and write a blog post. I'm not sure whether you will notice a difference here. Only time will tell. In any case, the summer holiday did us all a power of good. It provided the break we all needed. The counter was set to zero again.

I hope you have all had a great summer break too!

Brits on the Beach

"I don't understand this settlement behaviour," my Dutch husband uttered as we plonked ourselves down on beach towels on Daymer Bay beach in Cornwall, England.

There were couples, groups and families camped out on the overpopulated beach around us armed with fold away chairs with built-in cup holders, light portable tables, tents in every size and colour you could imagine, multi-coloured wind breakers, portable radios, enough reading material to make the nearest library more than a little jealous and large cool boxes brimming with enough to satisfy the most ravenous of hungers for many days should the world's food chain suddenly implode. One group parked on the other side of the beach to us had even brought their own full size BBQ and looked like they had no intention of leaving anytime that summer.

"You don't see this in the Netherlands," he muttered, genuinely bewildered as he looked around the beach.

Anyone beg to differ?