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Hort Activities during Winter Break
 During Winter Break our Hort kids enjoyed a fun week with hands-on projects like making hula hoop rugs, designing and building marble tracks and styrofoam airplanes, learning how to knit and making foil crafts. While disecting barn owl pellets one could hear delighted screams like "Look, I found a scull!" and oftentimes students would ask their parents to leave and get them later! We were lucky enough weatherwise to spend time outdoors and on the field, but also had the chance to build forts in the gym to little hearts' content. Everyone enjoyed the space and time to work on their various projects that could be left out and worked on over the course of the week. This enabled students to construct the most amazing and complicated marble tracks! Students as well as teachers had a great time.
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PYP Corner by Maike Silver
 Personal and social education is integrated transdisciplinary through all the learning in the PYP.
Its strands deal with self-concept, health and safety, interaction with others and organization for learning. To emphasize these concepts school wide all students engage in goal setting, which they will discuss with you during the student led conferences. This includes setting goals after participating in a fitness test which grade levels 1-5 participated in.
After the break we also started a new program to help us keep our school environment cleaner. Each grade assigns 2 helpers, who are responsible for reminding their peers to clean up after themselves and also help keep the playground clean. These students are wearing yellow vests which will identify them to other students of their "authority" status as environmental school ground keepers and are easily spotted by the teachers in case they need somebody to help clean up. We hope this program will install more responsibility on the part of the students and also eliminates having whole classes miss instructional time to keep the school grounds clean.
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Preschool Corner by Heike Schmalstieg
 Children learn scientific concepts through real experiences such as playing in the mud, holding a rabbit, measuring flour for a cake or observing a worm. For young children, science is a natural process - and sometimes a messy one! Teachers and parents alike can foster the child's understanding of the world around them by allowing them to 'mess around'. Our program promotes the development of the processes that are integral to science: observing, classifying, communicating, inferring, measuring and predicting. Observation skills are learned by examining leaves and rocks or by noticing how a shadow changes.
Classifying skills are learned by sorting buttons or shapes and by noticing their differences and similarities. Children learn measuring by measuring how much a plant has grown or by measuring the size of their friend in blocks. Children predict outcomes by guessing the color changes when mixing paints or what will happen if water or salt is poured over ice. These are examples of how science is used every day. Sometimes teachers organize science activities and experiments to foster exploration. At other times, exploration and discovery happens during free play at the water table, in the sand box, in the garden, etc.
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Every Size Gift Matters!
It's the time of the year. Our Annual Fund started and your contribution is essential to the day-to-day operations of the school and 100% tax-deductible. Donate now by clicking on the link below:
DONATE NOW!
We hope we can count on your participation!
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Vorschule - End of Unit
 At the end of their unit "How we express ourselves" about the great artists the Vorschule children painted with acrylic on canvas. The paintings in the picture show "The Japanese Bridge" of Claude Monet with spirals of Hundertwasser, landscapes like Van Gogh and shapes like Matisse. All the paintings will be on display at "Cafe Zoe" on Menalto Street in Menlo Park from Monday, March 7th through Wednesday, March 9th. You are invited to go, get a coffee and enjoy the children's art.
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| Cinequest Film Festival March 1 - 13
The International Film Festival is now playing in San Jose. The Festival features German culture and language film such as
- Irene Sandler
- Nannerl (Mozart's sister)
- Madly in Love
- In the Name of their Mothers
Go to www.cinequest.org for details on show times and dates.
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| Workday March 12
Are you interested in accumulating some volunteer hours? We will hold a workday on Saturday, March 12 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Tim Farris will organize volunteers in a variety of tasks including painting, sanding, cleaning and repairing. If you wish to participate please sign up in the office or send an email to Stella Klose at sklose@gais.org.
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Conference Day - March 10, 2011
 Our second annual Conference Day will includeparent-teacher conferences as well as student-led conferences. The students are getting ready for this day by selecting work for their portfolios and writing their self-reflections. By the end of the day, all of our parents will get a good summary of the work achieved thus far and some insight in how their children are working towards their personal learning goals. Parents are asked to fill in a feedback sheet so that they can give their own input about the conferences.
There will be no Hort on March 10.
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Donation
 Does anybody have a recent version of Adobe Illustrator for PC which they would like to donate to the school? Please contact Stella Klose at sklose@gais.org. Thank you.
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Bake Sale Fundraiser A Big Success
 Monday's bake sale fundraiser was a big success, raising more than $600 through the generosity of so many students, teachers, and parents at GAIS. Your support will help enable Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco's Global Village team to build homes for families in the remote village of Hiep Duc in central Vietnam, one of the poorest areas of the country that is highly vulnerable to disasters like typhoons during the rainy season.
You can read more about the trip (or make a donation) on Jennifer Doettling's FirstGiving page at:
http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/jennifer-doettling/global-village-vietnam-trip
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GAIS goes Facebook
 We are in the game! Please visit our new page "German-American International School (GAIS) on Facebook. We would like to get as many "likes" as possible. So, please hit the "like" button and spread the word! Thank you.
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Family Game Night for the School (VS - 8th Grade)
 Our Family Game Night is coming up on Wednesday, March 16 from 5:30 - 8:00 pm. Join us for a fun and relaxing evening of dinner, games and socializing. Middle school students will play games in the Library! VS-5th in the Gym! Cost is $5 per person for pizza, salad, fruit, dessert and drinks. Sign up in the office or email offmgr@gais.org with your name, the number of adults and number of kids in your family. See you there!
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Performance of The Baroque Concerto Ensemble
 Dagmar Dolatschko is inviting you to share the joy of music! The Baroque Concerto Ensemble is performing again on Sunday March 13, 2011 at 7:30 PM at the Palo Alto Art Center. Admission is free. For a full concert overview please see: www.baroqueconcertoensemble.org
Please spread word!
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