Help with school project in Germany

[finknottle]

Ds1's new secondary school has a project week in mid-Feb and I've volunteered to do something wrt English.

It's only 4 half-mornings, well, 3 really and then a presentation on the Open Day on the Sat.

Ds1 is so happy there and the teachers are v good. It's a small village school, quite new and while they've been renovating work-shops & labs etc, they've few resources for English.

As the children only really started learning English at the start of the school year they won't be up to much language-wise but need to be involved, i.e. we need to do something they can present.

I thought I'd do a British Isles display:

England
Wales
Scotland
Ireland

We can paint flags,
have posters/maps showing capitals etc
typical food, maybe write out short descriptions
sport (rugby, hurling, football, cricket)

So I need material. Have a couple of magazines I can cut a few pics out of.
Thought I'd contact the embassies in Berlin but the project starts on Feb 13th and don't have much time.

Help! Ideas, old mags you don't need - anything, please

Here outside as well as in. I used to shudder in horror but have mellowed since the children came along.
Still steadfastly refuse to put decorations in the porch/on window-sill/on gate etc.
Grew some mutant squashes last year like yellow pods from Planet Xod and I knew that mil would take them and put them in her porch as decoration

I know loads of Germans who do the easter tree thing. They would go out for a walk in the woods and bring back branches (OK sometimes twigs) with buds on and put them in a big vase and hang their blown-egg creations on it.

If you're getting the branches with buds on from the forest, you couldn't do it so far ahead of Easter I suppose, or you'd have to do it a couple of times.

How are you today Admylin? You have motivated me to make an appointment with the dentist for dd. The Kieferorthopädin was telling me to get braces you screw in every afternoon but I didn't fancy doing that and the dentist told me to wait, so I happily postponed the whole thing. Are those the kind your dc have?

Hi Sandy, my 2 dc have had a brace thing that the dentist called a platzhalter and they had to have a few teeth pulled (milk teeth) but to be honest I didn't understand exactly why. Yesterday ds got a really wierd contraption of a brace, can't even describe it but it isn't fixed so he can leave it out for school but afternoons and nights he has to wear it. We have to pay 20% of the costs too and you get it back if you successfully complete the therapy .. so we won't if we go to the US.

eek at having the milk teeth pulled! Didn't know that was the done thing. Sounds a bit drastic

What your ds has now is what the Kinderorthopädin was trying to tell me to get for dd when she was 4 because then it would all be paid for. Later it wouldn't be. I asked my dentist and he said there was no point, her Biss could still change a lot and then we would have to do the whole thing over again. I didn't fancy mucking about every afternoon screwing it in eitherand we would have to go back every few weeks and get it readjusted.

At least your ds is old enough to do it himself. Does he have a Kreuzbiss then? That's what they said dd has and she needed this brace in to gradually widen her upper (I think) jaw to align it better with the lower jaw. Didn't much like the sound of the whole thing.

Well will see what my hunky Bulgarian (?) has to say about it on Friday. Her second teeth do seem to be spurting out at odd angles, doesn't look quite right to me.

Ds has to have the bottom jaw pulled forward abit but we won't be doing the screwed in version - for now the one that he can take out himself is OK and then we'll stop. Ds has his dad's genes and he has exactly the same teeth and he is quite good looking (well he was 'till he started to fall to bits and get old!)
They said you can't officially start the therapy before they are 9 years old so you should have time with your dd to sort it out. Only the platzhalter thing is allowed before that age.

Hmm well will see what the powers that be have to say about it. I think she will need something at some stage but I'm not convinced about pulling the jaw outwards being such a necessary move.

How are you doing this morning? I am SO tired, gawd, feel dead on my feet so I treated myself to a Mohnschnecke this morning for breakfast. Yum. Did you speak to the school about the Gymnasium in the end or just leave it?

ah ok, now I've googled I see you are half way between here and Poland so forget that bit about Kleinmachnow! Sorry.

Looks nice there, might go there for a weekend. Is there much for dc to do there do you think Bekkie? My dd is 7. Quite fancy checking out the Moorheilbad´and getting primped and pampered.

ah duh , wrong thread! I'm rambling about Bad Saarow there. This place:
www.bad-saarow.de/

Do you fancy checking it out admylin? I'm thinking a weekend would be nice there, so long as there is something for dc to do.

I really do fancy checking out the outskirts of Berlin. Living in mitte is abit depressing, really isn't alot for families to do here and abit of countryside would do us good.
Looks like we left it abit late for Easter in UK - everyone has other plans and I'm going to go mad as they have 2 weeks off.
Dodn't speak to anyone at school about the gymnasium becaus eno one asked so I'll wait and tackle that when it happens.

oh do they have two weeks off?! Fantastic, can't wait! BLISS.... Must find out when the holidays are.

Have you ever thought about going somewhere in the East (du du du du ....DAAAAA! scary music)? I could imagine the Czech Republic being nice for a holiday. I love Prague but not with dc I think. Quite fancy the Polish or Bulgarian mountains. I loved Hungary, all those outdoor hot thermal baths and everyone all hanging about there from morning till night, playing chess, eating in the water all day. Very relaxing. Just the language got on my nerves a bit, couldn't sort of grasp it all.

I know they do cheapo horse-riding holidays in Poland and I've thought that might be a nice break. One good thing about Berlin (ha! I found one, did you notice?) is that it's a good base for exploring Eastern Europe.

What are the finknottles doing over Easter then? I hope we are not all swotting bl* maths and Rechtschreibung but let me just check the crystal ball... ah hem well guess what girls?!

yep, that's it we'll be doing a fair bit of maths where ever we are !

Have any of you heard of this Phorms school? They're a chain ( a bit , I know) of private bilingual schools. There's one opening in south Berlin in Aug and there'll be a reception class - am considering for ds1.

It's 16th to 28th (roughly) March so not that long to go.

admylin has been warily eyeing the one in Mitte for a while. It's too inconvenient for me to get to and it's a Ganztagsschule which I didn't really want. I mean officially it isn't but you still ahve to leave your dc there all day according to the sec. Where are they opening up in the south Bero, that's interesting for me? Alle Informationen bitte rüberwachsen lassen!!

There's one near us too but it just opened last year and it was too risky for me as a colleague of dh's sent his dc to the Berlin metropolitan the first year they set up and he said it's all just like a big experiment and they don't have a routine yet and the work is very slow. Worst thing was he said they had a majority of little Germans from all German homes so not even bilingual and for that reason the work was extremely slow as most of the dc had to learn to communicate in English first. PHORMS sounds nice from the website and I would have gone for it if it had been established.

It's Lichterfelde Süd, right in the south, so quite far out, but not too bad ftom where we are (Steglitz, convenient for the S-Bahn). I really want to get ds1 into some kind of Vorschule - otherwise he'll be pushing 6 1/2 before he's in school. He is loving kiga now, but it will bore him by the time he's 5. Oh, to be allowed to home ed

We never go away at Easter - enjoy slobbing at home. School work is Forbidden and other things not allowed during the school week are all allowed.

Easter here has been so warm the last couple of years - T-shirts and picnicks and playing in the garden. This year it's so early.

We'll probably be
in pyjamas till lunch time
comics, TV
playing computer/DS/PS: ds1 &ds2
playing Playmobil:dd
afternoons playing outside - chuck 'em out after lunch
bike rides
lots of paint/eggs/chicks etc
pottering around garden and playing with seeds:me
evenings: fire lit, dvd's, board games.

Can't wait

And ignoring the 4 phone-calls a day from bored friends who've driven their mothers mad so they say, ring up the finknottles and go round there and play... I give the boys the choice - usually we have the 1st week all to ourselves and we love it

yeah but who knows what crazy things the Berliner schulamt will decied to do or not to do in the next couple of years. Just wait, it might all just have been a bad dream by then!

One thing that bothers me about Phorms is the name, I'm afraid - sounds like some kind of pharmaceutical firm Maybe they'll give the schools additional 'individual' names at some point. I love the German tradition of naming schools after worthy people.

admylin

With hindsight I have to say the late start wasn't AS BAD as I feared. The thing is the way the ordinary schools here are organised and the dc are taught is really (hope I don't offend too much with this) formal and rigid so doing that any earlier than they do isn't going to be great for the dc.

I think an earlier start is fine if the work and the set-up reflects the way smaller dc learn. It has to be more creative, shorter periods of work and there has to be more social learning going on. In this respect I found the bilingual schools are much much better. This I suspect is because they have adopted quite a bit from the British curriculum.

Definitely go and look at Phorms Mitte and see what the reception set up is like there because it is already established. Maybe he could spend a trial day there or something too.

A mum I know told me she got her brother to go round all the English/bilingual schools and help her decide where to send her dc (she was in the states at the time). He said what he liked best was Phorms but she lives in Zehlendorf and it was too inconvenient to get too. I will have to tell her about this new school. Maybe it would suit her. Do they have a website for it yet, do you know?

Have you ever looked into CSA? They don't advertise at all, it's just word of mouth but they are Clayallee 122 if you want to just go and look. They might have a good programme for reception age dc. I'm regretting that I did not send dd there actually.

berolina - are they pushing back the cut-off date for school starters in Berlin? Here they seem to be planning to get children into school nearer 5 than 6/7.
By the time your ds starts things may well be different.

actually am that you Berliners have any choice at all of school but that's what I get for living in the provinces