Environment

At the German International School we believe in the power of nature, spending time outdoors, and taking care of our environment.

Nature Time for Early Learning Program

Nature Time provides our early learning students with the opportunity to explore the great outdoors. The students learn to navigate the natural world with all of their senses. During each lesson the students spend time learning about local wildlife and what they need to survive the four seasons of Oregon, we also explore animals and their habitats from around the world and of course we have fun watching life grow and change at the GIS Creek.

Kindergarten Waldtag

Kindergarten Waldtag is our monthly nature trip, where we spend time exploring our local green spaces. We discover the importance of having green spaces for local wildlife and how we can do our part to keep them clean and safe. Waltag themes are infused with IB topics to connect school work with the outdoors.

Students play games, tell stories and stop to use their senses in nature during these special excursions.   

GIS Creek & 4th-5th Grade Green Team

Our students, staff and parent volunteers have been working to improve the GIS Creek located on the school’s northern boundary. We start each year with the schoolwide Annual Creek Cleanup, where we tame summer growth of invasive swamp grass and prepare the space for the Green Team.

The Green Team, made up of our fourth and fifth grade students, visits the creek every month, learning about the importance of watersheds and how to keep local waterways clean. The Team works throughout the year to remove invasive species and plant native plants like Oregon Grape and Pacific Ninebark.

We will also be taking our environmental stewardship offsite as we explore how other natural areas in our community are managed.

GIS is a Green School

Oregon Green School: Premier Level

GIS is an Oregon Green School: Premier Level, the highest honor given to schools through the Oregon Green Schools program. This means that GIS commits to do our part in reducing waste, reusing materials and recycling! We partner with the City of Beaverton’s Organics program and compost all food waste; recycle our batteries with Interstate Batteries; recycle markers and caps with Crayola’s Colorcycle program and continually seek more ways to reduce our impact on the Earth.

Garden Committee

The GIS Garden Committee is a group of staff and parent volunteers who work to incorporate gardening into the IB themes in classes.

The committee maintains two vegetable gardens, multiple fruit-bearing plants and a pollinator garden. The pollinator garden illustrates to students firsthand the important role bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects have in our lives and our food sysems.

Past garden-based lessons included exploration of the sunflower’s life cycle with focus not only on the plant and seeds, but incorporating art from famed Sunflowers painter Vincent Van Gogh. Students have also grown cabbages that eventually became homemade coleslaw, and tried a variety of produce at Tasting Tables.