Windmills and wooden shoes

Chapter 36: THE WINDMILL GAME

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About This Book

The narrative follows Dutch siblings Jan and Katrina and their friends as they carry out everyday life in a small Dutch community: chores like milking cows, churning butter, selling milk; play and games; visits to windmills and barges; cultural details such as wooden shoes, storks' nests, blue-and-white dishes, dikes and canals; seasonal events including sleigh rides, St. Nicholas and Christmas; songs and simple illustrated scenes intended for classroom use. Episodes are short and episodic, combining practical descriptions of customs and landscape with domestic scenes to familiarize young readers with Holland's rhythms and material culture.

THE WINDMILL GAME

Jan and Katrina like to play the Windmill Game. They get Bram and Hilda and Kassie and Karl to play with them.

This is the way they play the game. Each one chooses a partner. They stand back to back. They stretch out their arms. They wave their arms up and down. When one arm goes up the other arm goes down. They look like a windmill whirling around.

They sing:

Windmill, windmill, whirl around

With a whirring, creaking sound,

Up and down,

Away we go,

Windmills go both fast and slow.

It takes two children to make a windmill in this Windmill Game. If Jan and Hilda and Kassie and Karl and Bram and Katrina all play, how many windmills do they make?