Week Ten

Cultural

I got to experience something very typically Dutch this week and that was the Dutch children in my class having their cycling exam. Of course the children have been cycling from the age of four and are far more at home on a bike than I will ever be so I decided not to participate and humiliate myself.

cycling exam

The children are also coming to the end of their Jeelo project, this involves them looking after an animal and learning about its life cycle, at the end they must make an interesting Power Point presentation outlining how to care for their animal and also different characteristics. It was an extremely interesting topic to observe in the school, I watched the children care for caterpillars and tadpoles with eagerness and ease. It is a fantastic way to combine a project with ICT as outlined in the NI Curriculum Pupils should be enabled to develop Using ICT skills by engaging in meaningful and purposeful activities, set in a range of contexts. They should use ICT to handle and communicate information, solve problems, pose questions and take risks.

This week was also our Tour to the West as part of our Dutch Culture and Society class. We visited Delft; famous for Delft pottery and also the New Church where King William of Orange is buried. The Nieuwe Kerk is also the home of the royal burial vaults and are not open to the public. We were all asked to visit the tower of the new church and after what seemed like an endless climb with hundreds of spiralled stairs we arrived very dizzy to a heart stopping view of Delft, if you had a fear of heights it was best not to look over the edge; it was a very beautiful view but the tower was very hard to navigate back down again and I suffered the after effects with a throbbing pain in my legs for days afterwards.

Parliament building 

Irish breakfast

On Saturday we travelled to Den Haag the home of the parliament, Queen Beatrix and the soon to be King Willem. We had a tour around the city with a difference, we got envelopes and split into teams, we had to find places using clues, it brought us around the entire city and my feet were very sore afterwards, we saw the working palace of the Queen as well as the new and old parliament buildings, the city has a lot of foreign embassies’ so it was fun to guess the country by the flags. I thought the city was beautiful it’s full of history, monuments, museums and culture. I think it’s true that everywhere in the world you will find an Irish pub, Den Haag had two, we enjoyed a wonderful Irish breakfast (no potato or soda bread though) and then sat out in the sunshine enjoying the sights and sounds of the city.

My favourite part however was seeing the Panorama by Willem Mesdag: firstly you walked along a dark corridor and up a spiralled stair, when you emerged all you could see were bright lights and sand, the panorama is one of Holland’s largest paintings, it encircles a room and is a beautifully detailed painting, there was sand and clogs all around you and it felt as if you were standing under an umbrella at the beach, it was truly something you need to see to understand. "Mesdag Panorama is the most beautiful sensation of my life. It has just one tiny flaw and that is its flawlessness." (Vincent van Gogh, 1881)

Part of the Panorama

CCEA (2007) Northern Ireland Curriculum, Belfast, CCEA.