Back to School!

Hello! I hope everyone is having a great Summer! We are gearing up for school in just a few short weeks! If you have not seen our supplies list, you can look at the list below, or find a printable copy on our school's website under "latest news" on the front page@ http://www.sonshinechristian.org/ Also below is a letter that was emailed out for our kindergarten and first graders welcoming everyone. You can read a copy of that below as well. 

Don't forget about our Back to School BBQ on the 26th, bring a friend if you would like, and our Open House on the 1st from 1-3.

2015/2016

Sonshine Christian Elementary Supply List

Students will be sharing their school supplies this year, so you do not need to put your child’s name on their supplies.  However, please do write your child’s name on their backpack and coat. You may bring materials to school during our Meet and Greet on September 1^st or by the first week of school.

Kindergarten/Frst

1 boxes of 24 count Crayola crayons

1 box of Crayola markers

1 box of sharpened pencils

1 pair of Fiskar scissors

1 bottle of 4 ounce white Elmers glue

1 glue stick

1 set of watercolors

2 box of Kleenex tissue (no tissues containing lotions please)

1 package of disinfecting wipes (i.e. Clorox Wipes)

1 ream printer paper

1 Beach Towel for rest time (Kindergarten/ Parents launder weekly)

Box dry erase markers

1 pocketed folder

Girls- ream of red construction paper

Boys- ream of orange construction paper

We are asking for certain brands because through experience, we have come to know which brands last and perform well. Thank you for all of your support!

-Mrs. Lee

Dear Parents/Guardians, Kindergarteners, and First Graders,

Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year. Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Bates will be your teachers this year. Though we have two separate classrooms we will be working closely together. We are setting up our classrooms this summer and are so excited for the year to begin! This is letter to tell you a little about ourselves, ask something of you, and to pass out a supplies list so you will be all ready for September.

About Mrs Lee...

My name is Mrs. Lee, parents you can call me Amber! God gave me a calling to Sonshine Christian School three years ago and I absolutely love it here, as I am sure you will too.   A little more about me, I graduated from WSU with my Bachelors in Psychology and my Masters in Teaching. I have a wonderful husband, John, and two sons, Gray and Noah. Noah is also in Kindergarten this year. Gray is 4 months old.  My family all attends Faith Baptist church, which is a blessed church! I welcome you to come and join us anytime. Some things I like are reading, running, playing with my kids and shopping=) Through the year you will be able to get to know me much more, I am big on communication and getting to know the families.

About Mrs. Bates…

Hello! My name is Kristy Bates (Mrs. Bates or Mrs. B) and I am very excited to be joining the amazing team here at Sonshine Christian. I live in Vancouver with my husband, Christian, and our two young daughters, Cassidy, who is 3-years-old, and Courtney, who turned one last spring. I taught for eight years at Arthur Academy, a charter school organization in Oregon, where I also grew up. I have a Bachelors in Human Development from Warner Pacific, a Post-Bacc in Elementary Ed. From Western Governors University, and I am just finishing my masters in Educational Leadership from Concordia University. I had the awesome opportunity to teach during the summer camp here at Sonshine, allowing me to meet some of the students and families. I am really looking forward to this school year, building a loving classroom community, teaching from a Biblical perspective, and helping the students rise to their academic potential.

About our classrooms…

We have two goals this year, the first is to teach our children to love school and learning. This is the only way they will succeed the next 12 years, and hopefully longer! The second is for our students to know that God knows them, loves them, and cares for them. We will spend a lot of time this year working on our Reading and Math skills, and learning the Word of God, but we will also have lots of fun playing, singing, and getting to know each other. Parents are always welcome in our classroom!

Events to know about

There will be a Teacher Meet and Greet on September 1st from 1-3. We highly encourage everyone to come. You will have the chance to bring your school supplies, see where you will be sitting the next day, explore the classroom, and meet Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Bates! This is also when we will be giving out parent packets which have a lot of important information. Also On August 26th at 6:00 we will be having a back to school BBQ with food and games. We hope to see you there.

Parents, we would also love for you to bring something for us; a letter about your child. We absolutely love seeing your child through your eyes. You can tell us the things they love, dislike, and the things that are special about them. One thing we are particularly curious about is their interests. This will help us get ready for them on the first day of school.

We look forward to seeing and meeting all of you!!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Amber Lee and Mrs. Kristy Bates

4/17/2015

Dear Parents,

We had a good first week back from Spring Break. The students were able to get right back into the swing things! This week we did some fun things with the Story if you give a mouse a cookie, we finished our chapter on sorting in math, and we have been learning about how to take care of our world. Below is a picture of the students painting their bird feeders and filling up our compost critter that we will be watching the next few weeks. 

Notes

·         For our classroom auction basket we will be doing an Art basket for kids. So you can send in items like watercolors, paint, crayons, paper, colored pencils, ect. Thank you everyone for your support!

·         Faith Baptist is inviting families to join us for Mother’s Day. Students who are able to come will get to do some songs for everyone, and there will be a cute video to watch!

·         On May 8^th, our Kindergarteners will be holding a Mother’s Day tea for all of our wonderful mothers, and grandmothers! I hope everyone can make it, it is a very special day.

·         As most everyone knows I will be on my maternity leave in 2 weeks. To make it easier on my sub, I am going to collect our Dr. Seuss reading bags before I leave. Please have them returned no later than Wednesday April 29^th. If you somehow lost it or can’t find a book, you can donate a book to our classroom library instead of buying the book. I buy these books with my own money normally second hand books. So if you lost them it would be much appreciated if you could donate a few back if you can’t find yours. Thank you!

·         We have another Writer’s Celebration this Friday. As always all parents are welcome to join us. What we normally do is students sit in two circles and they read their favorite writing to each other. They love when there are adults to read to too. After we have some sort of treat and juice to celebrate our hard work.

Reading

Next week we will be focusing on punctuations marks, reading fluently, and how to visualize as we are reading.

Math-

Next week we will be starting our chapter on position. You can help your child with this concept by pointing to different objects and asking is it on top of, over, under, inside of ect?

Social studies

Next week we will be finishing up our Earth day unit. I love how the students get into it! 

They are writing books about it during writing, and making sure everyone is recycling the things they are supposed to!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mrs. Lee   

4/3/15

I hope everyone is enjoying their Good Friday! The kids had a great time learning about the Easter story this year. I hope as they enjoy their Easter egg hunts and time with family they will also be thinking about the amazing gift that God gave us.

Notes

·        On Easter Sunday we are having breakfast, service, and an Easter egg hunt at church. We would love to have everyone, and anyone you may invite.

·        We will be starting an Earth Unit in celebration of Earth Day on the April 22^nd. We will be making recycled bird feeders out of cans. If you have extra cans at home, can you wash them and send some in for us. Thank you!

Reading

The next few weeks we will be learning how to manipulate sounds. For example, I might say “what word would you have if changed the /c/ in cat to a /b/?” These are easy things to do in the car to help your child learn this concept. We will also continue to work on reading our CVC words and blending the sounds together out loud, or if they are ready inside their heads.

Math

In math we are continuing to work on sorting by shapes, sizes, color, and number.  We are also continuing to work on counting to 100 and becoming fluent in our addition facts.

Bible

Our focus next week is on believing in Jesus even though we can’t see him, just like we know there is air even though we can’t see it.

Science

As I mentioned, we will be learning about reducing, recycling, and reusing in celebration of Earth day. We will be talking about ways to do the 3 R’s, and we will be doing some crafts to go along with it.

I hope everyone has a great Spring Break!

Mrs. Lee   

3/29/15

I hope everyone is enjoying there beautiful weekend! Next Monday and Tuesday there will be a sub in the class, Mrs. Hiller! She will also be our long term sub when I leave on May 1st. 

Sorry I did not get to take as many pictures this week=(

Reading

Last week we did a lot of review for our test on Thursday and review for our sight word tests. Next week we will starting Unit 5, which continues to practice those decoding skills, and listening to the sounds in the words. I will be sending home a new sight words list so keep an eye out for that!
RF.K.2

Math-

Next week we are starting a new chapter about attributes. This is another fun math concept where students get to do a lot of sorting of objects and recognizing how they are different. 
K.MD.1/2

Writing

In writing we are continuing to work on writing for a purpose. We will be focusing on adding spaces to our sentences, writing letters, and changing the font in our stories.

Bible

The students have been loving our resurrection eggs! They are doing really good at understanding the story and how things happened. We do talk about the painful things Jesus had to go through, but I do not go into crazy detail. We also talk a lot about why he did it and what it means for us, which is the real reason why Easter is so important and why I want them to know the whole story.

Science

Last week we talked about a few things including push and pull, and solids and liquids. The one picture I did get was the students eating their "solid" Popsicle made from "liquid" juice". We talked about why it changed and how it could change back.  

Have a great day!
Mrs. Lee

Last week was a fun week. We had our field trip on Wednesday, which was really fun. It was perfect because there were not too many people there and the kids were able to explore a lot. We also enjoyed the My Body lab. It was a personal class just for us where students learned about their bones, the heart, and some digestion. Tuesday was also a kind of fun day. We did some St. Patrick’s Day activities and learned about the real St. Patrick. We also wrote a story about a leprechaun together, the students are going to illustrate our story now. We ended Tuesday with our Writers celebration. There was also some learning going on this week too=)

Notes

·        Next week is our sight words test, please practice!

·        Don’t forget to send back book bags on Thursday.

·        There is no school on Friday.

·        We are holding a toy drive for children at Doernbecher’s Hospital. Thank you to everyone who has already donated!

·        We have a preview night for new students if you know anyone who is interested in attending next year.

*Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Warner will be taking 3-4 students with them to Doernbeckers hospital to drop of the toys they have raised. She will be picking students based on a story or paper they write. If your child would like to enter the contest to see if they can go, the writing should answer “If you could spend one day with a child from Doernbecher’s, what would you like to do with them?”

Reading-

Next week we will be doing a lot of review for our sight words and unit test, all on Thursday!

Math-

Last week we began our Measuring unit. The students are really enjoying it, and catching on pretty quickly. One hard concept for them to understand is taller and longer. They sometimes switch the meanings. K.MD.A

Writing-

This week we began our unit on persuasive writing. On Friday I taught the kids how to write poster about something they feel strongly about. They had fun with this! So if your child comes home wanting to make posters to hang around the house you will know why=)

Bible-

We have had so much fun this week in Bible. Every day until Easter we open one Easter egg to help us learn about the Easter story. Here is what we have done so far.

Day 1- There was a leaf in the egg to show how people laid down palm leafs for Jesus as he walked into the city.

Day 2- Our egg had bread in it to represent the last supper.

Day 3- We opened an egg with money in it, and talked about how Judas, his disciple, had betrayed Jesus for money. But then afterwards how bad Judas felt. 

I hope everyone has enjoyed their week.

This week we did a lot of writing! We wrote letters to kids in Dominica, and our favorite Disney characters. We also wrote thank you cards to missionaries that we know, and we are finishing up our How-to books which we will be celebrating next week.

Kids have been working really hard on their addition and subtraction fluency. You probably see a lot of papers coming home for that because we do one every day. Again students stick with one number until they can pass it with at least 5/6 correct. We will continue to do this up until Spring break, where hopefully by then everyone will have mastered their fluency! To help your child ask them simple addition or subtraction questions in the car or whenever you have time to give them more practice!

Notes:

·       Next week is the OMSI field trip; please make sure to turn in the field trip slip ASAP!

·       If you have time and would like to come to our writer’s celebration we will be having it on Tuesday around 2:00. If you can’t make it, we have one for each unit. It is really fun to see all their writing and hard work, they are very proud of it!

·       Registration for next year has started if you have not yet had a chance to enroll or speak to Mrs. Warner.

·       On April 18^th, we are having an adults Watercolor and Italian soda bar painting class, held by Mrs. Kim Tener. I am very excited about it! She is an amazing artist. It will be are ally fun night to paint and enjoy some adult time! The class is $40 and last about 2.5 hours. There is a limit of 20 so sign up quickly! I hope to see some parents there!

·       Registration for our summer camp has also started! They are having an under the water theme. It is a fun, interactive and an educational camp, I recommend.

Math

In math, we are beginning a new unit on Measuring length, height, weight, and capacity. This is the fun math for students because it is more hands on for them.

Bible

Next week we are beginning our story of Easter. We will be learning about Easter by using resurrection eggs. Each day, for 12 days, we will open one egg to help us learn the story of Easter. It will be fun=)

Writing

As I mentioned, we are finishing up our unit on How-to books next week. Our next unit is Writing For A Reason. Students will be learning how to be persuasive and use their opinions by writing stories, making posters, or writing letters.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Mrs. Lee

3/6/2015

Notes:

• I know it is not for another couple months, but I have planned the day for our mother’s Day Tea Party. It will be on Friday May 8^th. I wanted to give some way advance notice for those who have trouble getting time off because this is a pretty special occasion for you and the students! It will be in the afternoon at 1:30.

• Toy drive-This month for our missions focus we are holding a toy drive for the children at Doernbecher’s Hospital.

Literacy

This week we did a lot of rhyming activities to along with our Dr. Seuss week. The students love the rhyming books! I did have some cute pictures but my son went through my phone and deleted them all :/

Next week we will continue to work on nonsense words, breaking up words, and our sight words.

We are also focusing on how to write letters. Next week students are going to write a letter to a missionary to ask them some questions. We are also going to write a letter to our favorite Disney character and send it to them. It is fun because they will send a postcard back.

Math

In math, we are working on breaking numbers 11-19 into 10 and so many left. We are also still focusing on addition and subtraction. We have been talking a lot lately about the different ways you can find the answer: fingers, counters, or a number line.

Bible

This week we talked about Missionaries, and Mrs. Strickland talked to us about her experience. The students really enjoyed it, and many said they would like to do a missions trip when they get older! Warms my heart=)

Science

We are finishing up our “All About me” unit next week by making our “All About Me” books.

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Lee