Tobi and Hansi's blogging how their US and German schools differ

The name of our school here in Germany is Seidlgrundschule. Our school is very different than Lowry Elementary. First we will tell you about the things we do not have here in Germany. Then we will tell you things we have here that we do not do in DPS.

Germans do not say a pledge of allegiance, which went away with Hitler. There is no school pledge either. Is that there is no nurse and no line for anything. The front doors are always wide open and the administration office is hidden from the doors so you can
physically walk right out whenever you want. We don't have lock downs here. People don't carry guns here in Germany, except for the police, so their is little concern for gun violence, at least in our Markt. There are no hall passes. If you need to go to the bathroom, you point outside. To signal the teacher that you want to talk, you raise your pointer finger.


We are southern Germany: they are Catholic here. Some rooms have crosses on the walls. Every morning Tobi's class says Schulegebet, or have prayer. The teacher turns off the lights, the student clasp their hands and they say a prayer. Hansi's class does not have Schulegebet. We take a coarse on the lutheran religion here. We could choose between Catholic, Lutheran and ethics. When signing into town and school, you must say what religion you are. They do not have Jewish studies and since we are also, Lutheran, from our Dad's side of the family, we decided to learn about Lutheran. We learned knitting and will do wood shop in school. We must wear house shoes while we are in class. We change shoes again for sport (P.E.). Every 2 hours we get a 20 minute recess. We go to school from 8 am-1 pm and eat lunch at home. We take a city bus to and from school, so we ride with first graders through high schoolers and adults. Since we arrive when it is still dark out, many students have glow in the dark stripes, so they can be seen by cars. This picture is us walking to the school front doors. There is a crossing guard who meets us when we get off the bus and walks us the few blocks to school. They also walk us to the bus after school.

In Tobi's class, one student tells the class the date. Here in Germany, we say the day then the month then the year. Here we separate the numbers by dot (not hyphen or slashes as we write in the US). In math, they use commas instead of decimals so 5,38€=5.38€. Everything is measured in the metric system.

Our sisters have their own blog and you can see how they see school here. Some pictures from Gia and Annika's gymnasium, or school. Attached are pics from library, climbing wall, lockers, chemistry hall. their link:
http://sisterstogetheralways.blogspot.de/2012_12_01_archive.html?m=1

First week of school under the kids belt. All feeling happy and have friends! So far, so good :)