There’s a good reason why we’re called the International Montessori School. Many of our students have joined us from all over the world – and that includes several members of the newspaper team.
We decided to use Street View in Google Maps to show you our former cities: where we lived, went to school and spent our free time. Most of these places are very different to Berlin, so we hope you’ll find our international visits interesting!
Our first guide is Noga, who comes from Tel Aviv in Israel. Although her German and English are getting better every day, she preferred to write about her tour rather than be recorded speaking.
“This is my school, in the building I show you first is where grade 1, 2 and 3 are learning together, and in the other building are all the other grades (grade 4 to grade 9).
This is the art we did during corona, the panda you saw in the video is made out of masks, and the pinocchio is from paper.”
“Here is my street. I am very close to the sea and at night you can see the sunset very well (it is very beautiful).
The small pavilion is where I love drinking cold coffee, and where you see the green awning is the supermarket”.
A lot changed at IMS during the Autumn holiday, and we noticed the difference as soon as we got back to school. Wow! A new, improved playground that makes break times even better.
For a start, the tarmac has been completely refurbished. There are no more uneven surfaces, so the children feel completely safe when running or playing.
There’s a stylish, permanent table-tennis table (the old one had to be constantly wheeled outside, which sometimes got a bit exhausting).
A new hut has been built for playground equipment, and several big planters will soon be filled with greenery and flowers. There are new benches too, providing plenty of places to sit, eat or chat.
But the best thing of all just has to be the fantastic rope climbing frame.
The climbing frame has proved a hit with all the kids, big and small.
The kids absolutely love it, and clamber to the top as soon as breaks begin. The teachers and Hort team enjoy it, too, because it’s fun to watch the children having such a good time.
All in all, it’s a super new playground, but we’re not only lucky to have these great facilities, we’re fortunate, too, that a fantastic team helped make it a reality.
Frau Anke Deus, our head of Hort, created a masterplan for the new layout, while our brilliant team of in-house handymen did much of the actual construction work, digging and building tirelessly to get everything ready in time.
A big ‘thank you’, then, to everyone involved, including, of course, the kids for their positive feedback and enthusiasm. Enjoy your new playground and the beautiful, late Autumn weather!
Official seal of approval from one of our students, who asked the news team to film his appreciation 🙂
Hi! I’m Mike Brennan from the Newspaper AG, and I’d like to join the students in showing you where I’m originally from.
In the video, I start at Notting Hill Gate and turn into Kensington Church Street, the road I lived in. I then show you one or two nearby streets and places I enjoyed going to.
Revisiting my old home via Street Map made me feel quite nostalgic: I love this part of London, and hope you enjoy this virtual visit, too.
The art project was designed to complement two other class topics: measuring, with Frau Dunzer, and the inventors project, which 5-6 were working on in NaWi (I thought the 4th graders would like the chance to be inventive, too).
First, the kids made the labels, measuring and cutting the paper carefully so that it would fit around a small plastic bottle. They then designed and coloured their label in styles ranging from an Aldi-type brand to a dreamy, flowery fantasy.
Of course, all the kids were really curious about how the final ‘machine’ would look, but they had to wait until the next art class to find out.
When the big day arrived, I gave each child a bubble-machine (I had made them myself previously, because A LOT of hot glue was involved – risky, even for my careful 4th graders) and asked them how they thought the machines would work.
There were plenty of guesses, but no one was quite sure.
We then pasted our labels to a bottle, and went downstairs to the garden terrace. This was going to get messy!
As you can see, the snake blowers worked really well, and the kids had so much fun creating lo-o-o-o-o-o-ong strings of bubbles with the help of ordinary washing up liquid.
Admittedly, the rainbow part wasn’t quite as successful: the food colouring that was meant to tint the bubbles only worked well in blue, but no one seemed to mind.
Towards the end of the afternoon – and lots of washing up liquid later – the garden was covered in foam, the bubble machines were starting to look slightly soggy and some of the kids were a little damp, too.
Nevertheless, most of the children decided to take their machine home in order to create the longest foam snake possible. Or, now that they knew how the invention worked, ask their parents for help with making a new, improved version.
How to make a bubble snake machine
What you need:
– a small plastic bottle
– fabric with a tight weave, such as a cleaning cloth
– a rubber band or hot glue
– strong tape
– washing up liquid
– (optional) food colouring to tint the bubbles
Assembly:
Cut the base off the plastic bottle using scissors or, if an adult can help you, a sharp knife.
Cut a circle of cleaning cloth. Make sure it is big enough to cover the base, and that you have a few extra centimetres to wrap upwards, around the sides of the bottle.
If your plastic bottle is sturdy, you can try attaching the cloth using a rubber band. If not, use hot glue.
For the bubble maker to work well, it is important that the cloth is air-tight. Wrap some packing tape around the edges so that they are well fixed to the bottle.
Add two or three big squirts of washing-up liquid or liquid soap to a saucer full of water to make the bubble solution.
If you are using food colouring, drip it onto the bubble solution, or onto the bottle’s cloth base.
Dip the bottle into the liquid, then blow from the top to make a snake!
(Remember that you can still put the bottles in recycling when you’re finished with them – just remove the cloth part first).
Last week, the kids in 1-3 class Rubin headed to the Mensa to prepare a delicious treat – a fruit smoothie packed with vitamins and flavour.
They washed and cut all the ingredients themselves before Frau Häusler showed the children how to blend them in a mixer.
And then it was time to enjoy the ‘fruits’ of their labours – a late summer smoothie that all the kids loved.
Letzte Woche machten sich die Kinder der Klasse 1-3 Rubin auf den Weg in die Mensa, um eine köstliche Leckerei zuzubereiten – einen Fruchtsmoothie voller Vitamine und Geschmack.
Sie wuschen und schnitten alle Früchte selbst, bevor Frau Häusler den Kindern zeigte, wie man sie in einem Mixer püriert.
Und dann war es Zeit, die “Früchte” ihrer Arbeit zu genießen – ein spätsommerlicher Smoothie, der allen Kindern schmeckte.
Last week, kids and parents had the chance to meet some very famous people – Leonardo da Vinci, Maria Montessori, Margarete Steiff, Bill Gates and many others – to hear about their lives and work.
How?
The event was the Inventors Fair, in which members of years 5-6 dressed up in costume and presented fascinating information about their chosen innovator’s life and inventions.
The kids had spent many weeks researching their projects with Frau Gerstner, and produced some lovely posters which they also displayed at their personal stand.
But best of all were the presentations, in which audience members could meet and greet the famous personalities, then hear about their lives and work.
Wearing wigs, hats and other accessories, every child really looked the part, and gave great performances detailing everything about their favourite inventor.
Meeting famous people has never been so much fun – or so educational!
The page you see above is from the first ever version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which you can read more about here.
Do you see the text highlighted in yellow?
“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice, (she was so surprised that she quite forgot how to speak good English).
Alice’s first words (which mean something like ‘verquerer und verquerer’ in German) are so famous in England that some people still use them to describe a strange or unusual situation.
But, as Lewis Carroll says in his text, Alice’s grammar is wrong. She is so surprised by her adventures that she has forgotten how to speak ‘good English’!
In this case, Alice is using something which, in grammar, is called a comparative. Not surprisingly, a comparative sentence uses adjectives to compare things.
Other examples are:
His book is smaller than hers.
or
My sister is older than me.
As you can see, in these examples – er is added to the end of the adjective.
In English, this usually happens if the adjective has got just one syllable*.
But if the adjective has three or more syllables, we must always use the word more in front of it:
His book is more interesting than hers.
My sister is more intelligent than me.
So – what Alice should have said is ‘more curious and more curious’, because the word cur-i-ous has got three syllables.
Perhaps it’s good to know that even native speakers can make mistakes with their English from time to time – including Alice!
*Sometimes – but not always – this also happens with adjectives that have two syllables. Unfortunately, the rules for two-syllable adjectives are a little bit more complicated. Maybe you will learn them in your English class 🙂
At the moment, Frau Dunzer and Miss McAvoy are presenting a reading workshop about the book Alice in Wonderland.
This will continue for several weeks, and is part of the current theme for study in level 4-6, Large and Small Worlds.
All the kids are really enjoying the book, which is a timeless classic featuring fantastic characters such as the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter and, of course, Alice herself.
But did you know that Alice really existed? Read on for some fascinating facts about this magical book!
The book’s real title is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
However, most people just call it ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
The book’s author was a man called Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Charles Dodgson / Lewis Carroll as a young man
He was born in 1832 and died in 1898.
The name on the cover of his book – Lewis Carroll – is a ‘pen name’, or invented name.
He probably used this name because he thought it was easier for people to remember.
He was a Maths professor at Oxford University.
Charles Dodgson – aka Lewis Carroll – also wrote very complicated books about Maths, which definitely aren’t the kind of thing most children would like to read!
However, many people think that some of the crazy situations in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – like Alice getting bigger or smaller – are also ways of thinking about very difficult Maths problems.
The daughter of Carroll’s boss was the inspiration for Alice.
At Oxford, Lewis Carroll became friends with a man called Henry Liddell, who was an important person at the university.
Henry had TEN children, including seven daughters.
Alice Liddell, the original Alice
One of the girls, Alice Liddell, asked Lewis Carroll to make up a story in which she was included.
So he told her a story – at first, just speaking it – and Alice liked it so much that she asked him to write it for her.
Lewis Carroll carefully wrote it by hand in a big book, and even included his own drawings. He gave the story to Alice as a Christmas present in 1864.
This is a page from Carroll’s present to Alice.
Afterwards, Lewis Carroll decided that other children would probably like the story, too.
So in 1865 he published ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ as a real book, with illustrations by a famous artist.
The book has been translated into 176 languages
That’s a lot of languages!
In addition, the book has never been out of print – which means that new copies have been created continually since it was first published in 1865.
