Art Exhibition at Cafe Zoe 

Once again the Vorschule students at GAIS have wowed the coffee crowd at Café Zoe with their works of art.

Each student produced a personal work of art which combined the styles of two of the various artists that they studied in this last six week IB unit. All the works where displayed together with two whole class paintings that were done with local artist Tim Christensen. These last two were put on a silent auction with proceeds being used to support future class projects.

Our thanks to ever supportive Café Zoe for providing the venue and helping our students celebrate their success.

The outstanding quality of these art works shows both the creative ability of our student population and the great teaching by our Vorschule staff of Ina, Dagmar, Jutta and Birgit.

News from the Head of School

With 285 students already enrolled for the next school year it is certain that we will reach a new school record and quite possibly surpass the 300 mark.  In reviewing the sibling discount policy, the school has decided to make an adjustment which will help out our larger families.  The new policy increases the discount for the fourth child to 30%.  The same discount would apply each child beyond four.  

Volunteer hours has been a topic in recent parent coffee discussions.  Although the volunteer program is a great way for the school to keep its tuition level low and to build a sense of community, we understand that coming up with the 20 required hours can be challenging for some families.  To this end we have added two Saturday work days to our program and we already have over 30 families participating in the workday this Saturday. A second one is set for May 7 from 10-16:00.  We have also reviewed the volunteer hour commitment for parents in the two and three day Preschool programs and decided to adjust them in accordance with the logic of pro-rating. As such the two day groups will have to complete 8 hours and the three day group 12 hours.  Helping the class teachers with the class yearbook pages will also earn 10 hours.   As we look towards next year, we will continue to add other ways that parents can complete their hours including the giving of credit for participation in field trips. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.

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PYP Corner by Maike Silver 

Student Led Conferences are a great way to involve the student and parent in the school community. Today the students had the responsibility to lead their parents through the process of their learning and understanding at school by showing a variety of different work samples. Another component of the conference included reflecting of the quality of their work and present goals they set for themselves for the rest of the school year. All this allowed the parents to gain inside into the kind of work the students are doing. Teachers and students spend a lot time and effort into the preparation of this day and we hope this information helped you identify how you can support your child in their future learning. 

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Thank you for attending the parent conference today. This day is a great opportunity to share the progress your child is making and to compare notes about how the child is doing at home and at school, as well as set goals for the remainder of the school year.

Annual Fund Up-date - Week 1 

Spring Break 

We do offer Hort/Day Care during the Spring Break from April 11^th to 15^th. If you need a space in Hort please send in the sign-up form, which will be send out Friday March 11th. The deadline for signing up for Hort is April 1^st.

Peninsula Youth Orchestra Performance

On March 19^th, our two Peninsula Youth Orchestra musicians will be on stage again:

Adrian Putz and Olivia Pintz are performing in Orchestra Nova, part of Peninsula Youth Orchestra, on Saturday, March 19^th, 4 pm at Carlmont High School Performing Arts Center, Tickets $10/$15 at the door.

They will be playing some exciting pieces by Bizet (Carmen Suite), Robert Smith (The Great Locomotive Chase ... this piece is worth coming to the concert - absolutely awesome!!), and other contemporary overtures and arrangements.

Traffic Study at GAIS

Do you need additional volunteer hours for this school year?  Our school is growing and we need to perform a traffic study. We are looking for some parent volunteers to help us collect data on car traffic the week of March 21st. This job will take approximately 4 hours of collecting information during drop off times from 8 - 8:45 am everyday for one week.

• When:  Monday, March 21st - Friday, March 24th, from 8:45 am
• Where: 1) stand in front of car drop-off zone during school on  Elliot Drive; and 2) stand in front of parking lot.
• What:  forms to be provided by Facilities Committee
• How:  bring counting and inquiry abilities, and a pencil.

Survey volunteers will collect data to answer the following questions:  How many cars are using the drop-off zone?   How many are not using the zone and Why?  How many students are riding in each car?  How many students are carpooling?  Are parents parking on Elliot Drive, if so, why? How many cars are containing preschool and vorschule students who need to be signed in by parents?  GAIS will provide the forms to record these data.

The goal of collecting these data is to understand how we can improve the way the GAIS community uses our drop-off zone, parking lot and Elliott Drive in general.  We would like to continue to be a good neighbor in our community, and strive to improve traffic efficiency.

If you are interested please contact Peter Metzger or Laura Vaughan at lvincentvaughan@yahoo.com.

Kangaroo Math Competition on March 17 

This year Grades 3-8 will again be participating in the Kangaroo Math Competition. This is a world-wide competition to promote math and more than 5,000,000 students in 40 countries participate.  We will be doing the German version of the competition.  All participants will receive a certificate and their score. Please note that the results have nothing to do with student grades or achievement at GAIS.  

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!

SSIL Activities 

GAIS will soon begin its official participation in the Small Schools Independent League. The first activity we will be involved in is soccer.

Our students from Grades 5-8 have enrolled a co-ed team in the tournament and will play a series of games.

At the moment the schedule has the following matches:

April 7 GAIS vs Charles Armstrong at GAIS starting at 16:00

April 21 GAIS vs Alma Heights in Pacifica starting at 16:00

Other SSIL activities that our students will participate in are tennis, bowling, swimming and golf.  

Grade 5 Visit to Media Center by Michaela Strasser & Katharina Taatz 

Towards the end of our 4th unit about Media (How we express ourselves) we booked a visit at the Media Center on San Antonio Road. The visit involved a workshop on how to create a talk show in the studio. The students were very motivated to create their own show which involved a discussion about our school. To do this the students had to learn about how to work behind the scenes in the control room, in the studio, behind the cameras, as floor director as well as talk show host and guests. The role of the guests was to advertise the school. We wished you could have felt the excitement of the students in taking over all of those different tasks!  A video of the show was made which we hope to share with everyone in the near future.

Looking for Host Families for Interns

We will soon have 2 new interns working with our teaching staff in the Middle School. We are looking for a Host family for an Intern who is coming from the University of Bern in Switzerland. Sabine Frimpong will be coming from May 9th to July 2nd 2011.   We are also looking for a Host Family for Bianca Gratzl. She is from the University of Vienna/Austria and will stay from September 9th to November 29th, 2011.  If you have space and are interested to welcome an Intern, please contact Dominic Liechti at dliechti@gais.org.