These wooden shoes make fine boats, and sometimes the boys take them off and sail them in the canals. The little girls use them for doll carriages, or play they are beds, and tuck their dolls into them for a nap.
If you were walking down a village street in Holland you might see a red silk ball, or a pink silk one, hanging at the front door of one of the houses. This is to show that there is a little new baby in the house. If the ball is red, the baby is a boy; if it is pink, the baby is a girl.
There are very good schools in Holland, and all the children go to school and learn to read and write and sing, just as you do. But their reading and singing would sound very strange to you, and you could not read one word of their writing.
The Dutch children have vacations and holidays, of course. The holiday they like best of all is Santa Claus Day. It comes on the sixth day of December, and is very much like our Christmas Day.
The boys and girls put their wooden shoes in front of the fireplace, on the hearth, just as you hang your stocking near the chimney, and Santa Claus rides over the roofs of the houses on a big horse and drops presents down the chimney into the little shoes.
How would you go from your home to New York City? How long would it take?
What would you like to see in Holland?
What would you see that you never saw before?
Why do the people in Holland build windmills?