March 13th, 2010 Posted in Family, Homeschooling, Travels | No Comments »
We joined a Dutch home educators email group in order to get in contact with some other home educating families. Since a field trip was planned for the Geldmuseum (the Money Museum, the former Dutch Mint) we thought we’d go along. We met a few other home educators, but we didn’t interact with them a whole lot.
The information in the Mint was all in Dutch, so it wasn’t possible to learn as much as we would have liked. For example, each visitor receives a card. By playing the games you could earn money to use at the gift shop.The games had to do with the affects money had on people over time and place. Unfortunately, you had to read the instructions and answer questions, which were only in Dutch. Although somewhat disappointing, we did see some interesting things, including coins from Roman times till the present, money from different countries of the world, and a sidewalk made of money.
The money from around the world was always displayed with a representative from the country. Here is the Canadian representative.
Since the Netherlands changed over to the Euro, the country no longer produces its own coins. To commemorate the occasion, the museum made a sidewalk with old Dutch coins. There was a scavenger hunt for the last coin made, a lion image, designed by a child, as well as for the few coins where the Queen’s head is shown. The people who made the sidewalk turned all the heads down in order that we would not walk on the head of the monarch, but a few turned over during the final stages of the construction of the sidewalk.
The architecture was built with the intent of showing strength and grandeur to symbolize security.
A canal scene from across the street.
Enjoy!
Diana
