The Winter Concert was a success. The children all looked adorable and sounded great too! A HUGE Thank you to Catherine Van der Salm for the amazing job she did making us sound so wonderful!! We watched the DVD of the program, it’s worth $10!! There close ups of the kids and it priceless!! You can still purchase them through Maria.

Our Family Holiday Party is this week on Thursday and Friday at 11:00 am for the morning class and 2:15 pm for the afternoon class. We will have a book exchange for the children. The book should be under $10, gender neutral, and wrapped. The children love getting to pick a new book to take with them, you might want to talk with them about the fact that they aren’t getting the book that they bring but they will get a new one.

I hope the weather doesn’t interfere with our week, because it’s one of my favorites of the year. But just in case this weather gets worse…… If the Vancouver School District is closed or on a 2 hour late start, our school is cancelled for the day. You can call the school for updated info at 693-5614 and I will send out an email as soon as I find out our schedule has been affected.

Thank you all for sharing your traditions with us, its been fun having all the different activities with several Moms coming in our class.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be making peppermint bark and decorating a peppermint candy. We will finish wrapping our presents to our families. We will make some decorations for the party and finishes decorating our handprint Christmas Trees. We will read Olive the Other Reindeer, it’s a cute story of a dog named Olive J We will have the a present wrapping station, the children will actually just wrap blocks up but its good fine motor practice. I am going to leave Pumpkin at my house this week, because of the amount of things I have to carry and it would be better for her to stay in a nice warm spot this week.

A note from the teacher

I want to thank you all, for the food donations that have filled our box almost everyday and for sharing your families with us. It was wonderful to hear the children talk about their families. Thank you also for sharing your traditions with us. It’s a fun time of year and it’s makes it even more special when we share it.

Our Winter Concert is this Tuesday at 7 pm. The children need to be at school by 6:40.
Prepare yourself to be dazzled!!

Scholastic Book Fair is here!! Be sure to check out the books before and after school. Thank you to all our parents that help out with all these fun events.

Our Family Holiday Party is next week on Thursday and Friday. We will have a book exchange for the children. So that everyone gets about the same quality book, the books should cost somewhere between $6 - $10 and not be gender specific.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be joined by some of our Moms. One mom will read The Twelve Days of Christmas, one will read Olivia Helps with Christmas and one Mom is coming in on Friday to make Reindeer Mix. Reindeer need food too! Last week a couple of our Moms brought in Gingerbread Houses and the Children on Thursday Morning got to decorate a house. I will try to make it as even as I can with sharing the Family Traditions, as far as the activity that your child will get to participate in but not every will be able to participate in every activity because they may not be in the class that is sharing a certain tradition. If you have an activity that you would like to share or a book but are unable to come in, Teacher Veronica and I would be happy to share those with the children. In addition to the family traditions that we will learn about we are also going to be Jingle Bell Painting, Evergreen Painting, and Christmas Tree Painting.

Word Wall

This week’s letter will be the letter Bb. It will be our letter until after the Winter Break. Some of the words that have made it in so far are:
Bridge –Puente
Brother—Hermano
Bird - Pájaro
Bicycle- Bicyle
Brooklyn

A note from the teacher

We are hoping to have the children share their family holiday traditions with our class over the next few weeks. If you have a special book that you read during the holidays or a special recipe. We encourage you to come in and share that with our class. Last year one Mom came in and painted faces. Just let me know what day you would like to come in and share with us.

The Food Drive will begin this week and our class will have a box outside our room for our class’s donations. Donations will be taken until December 18th. This is a great way to talk with your children about helping others. I recently saw a T.V. interview with an eleven year boy in Seattle that was terminally ill and his “Make-a-Wish” wish was to feed the homeless. My hope is that we teach all our children to be caring and compassionate.

There are some dates that you should mark on your calendar’s…..
Breakfast with Santa December 6th
Winter Concert December 9th @ 7 pm
Family Holiday Parties December 18th & 19th


Breakfast with Santa tickets are on sale for those of you that aren’t sure what this is. We have breakfast at Applebee’s (this year it’s the Applebee’s on Mill Plain) and the children can visit with Santa. The breakfast is eggs, bacon, pancakes, and a drink. Tickets are $5.00 and you can purchase them in Maria’s office. This is a great time to visit with other Little Acorn Families and 100% of the proceeds go to our school.

Our Winter Concert is coming up fast. We have been practicing our songs for a few weeks, but will be practicing with the other classes for the next two weeks. I will be sending the words to our songs so you can practice with your child at home :) The children need to be at school by 6:40 on Tuesday December 9th.

Scholastic Book Fair is coming to our school (yea). The Book Fair will be at the school the week of our Winter Concert. More details

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be talking about our families. I am hoping that if at all possible you could send a picture of your family together at Thanksgiving. We want to talk about how we celebrate holidays with our families and how some things are the same & some things are different. We are hoping to have the children share their family holiday traditions. If you have a special book that you read during the holidays or a special recipe. We encourage you to come in and share that with our class. Last year one Mom came in and painted faces. Just let me know what day you would like to come in and share with us. We also would like you to send in a copy of a favorite family recipe with our class for a class project.

A note from the teacher

There are some dates that you should mark on your calendar’s…..
Breakfast with Santa December 6th
Winter Concert December 9th @ 7 pm
Holiday Parties December 18th & 19th


Breakfast with Santa tickets are on sale for those of you that aren’t sure what this is. We have breakfast at Applebee’s (this year it’s the Applebee’s on Mill Plain) and the children can visit with Santa. The breakfast is eggs, bacon, pancakes, and a drink. Tickets are $5.00 and you can purchase them in Maria’s office. This is a great time to visit with other Little Acorn Families and 100% of the proceeds go to our school.

Our Winter Concert is coming up fast. We have been practicing our songs for a few weeks, but will be practicing with the other classes for the next two weeks. I will be sending the words to our songs so you can practice with your child at home :) The children need to be at school by 6:40 on Tuesday December 9th.

Scholastic Book Fair is coming to our school (yea). The Book Fair will be at the school the week of our Winter Concert. More details to come.

Next week we will be talking about our families. I am hoping that if at all possible you could send a picture of your family together at Thanksgiving. We want to talk about how we celebrate holidays with our families and how some things are the same & some things are different. So taking that lead I’m asking for your help. We are hoping to have the children share their family holiday traditions. If you have a special book that you read during the holidays or a special recipe. We encourage you to come in and share that with our class. Last year one Mom came in and painted faces. Just let me know what day you would like to come in and share with us.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be continuing our talk about being thankful and helping others. We will finish our helping hand art. We will be reading a wonderful book about sharing, The Doorbell Rang. We’ll be making cookies to share with another class, as well as having some ourselves.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be talking about what we are thankful for and how we can help others. Sheltin’s family is training a service dog and will come in on Wednesday morning to visit Vencor with us so we will be talking about that. We will be making Turkey Handprints, you can’t have Thanksgiving without Pre-school Turkey Handprints! We will also make Helpful Handprints and talk about how we can help others. That will be our focus for our Thanksgiving celebrations as well. So next week we won’t be having a party but we will be making cookies to share with another class, as well as having some ourselves. We will be reading Ribbon Rescue, which is about a girl that shares the ribbons out of her hair to help people that she meets throughout the day.

A note from the teacher

There are some dates that you should mark on your calendar’s…..
Family Fun night November 19th
Breakfast with Santa December 6th
Winter Concert December 9th
Christmas Parties December 18th & 19th

This Wednesday is Family Fun Night at Golden Skate from 6-8 pm and if you eat at Pizza Itailina between 4 -8 that night a portion of the proceeds goes to our school. Make sure you mention that you are with Little Acorn.

Breakfast with Santa tickets go on sale Monday, for those of you that aren’t sure what this is. We have breakfast at Applebee’s (this year it’s the Applebee’s on Mill Plain) and the children can visit with Santa. The breakfast is eggs, bacon, pancakes, and a drink. Tickets are $5.00 and you can purchase them in Maria’s office.

So I just wanted to explain how the book bags will work. The kids can take a book home with them in their book bags and when they want a new book they bring their bag back and hang it on the door and we will exchange them. They can bring it back everyday they come or once a week to get a new book.

We will be visiting Vencor this week on Wednesday and Thursday (Thursday afternoon). It would be great if the children would like to wear their purple shirts on those days.

A note from the teacher

Thank you to all of you for coming to conferences and sharing great things about your child with me. It was wonderful to visit with all of you and if for some reason we weren’t able to meet we can meet sometime this week or next, just email me and we will set something up.

We have received enough money for a larger tank and some extra supplies for Pumpkin! Thank you !!!!!! You are all amazing!!

So hopefully you are all receiving my emails now, I apologize if some of you weren’t included right from the start. I want to make sure that I communicate what’s happening in our class as effectively as possible.
Speaking of communication, one of our parents has set up a social network for the Sunshine Class so that we can talk with each other and share photos, videos, and events. It is a wonderful opportunity for our class to grow closer and really be involved with each other. I Highly recommend checking it out. I have a link to it on the blog and I will also send a link in the email.

There are some dates that you should mark on your calendar’s…..
Breakfast with Santa December 6th
Winter Concert December 9th
Christmas Parties December 18th & 19th

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will explore different shapes and where shapes show up during our day. We will play a show matching game and play shape Bingo. We will sing a fun song about shapes and make a shape collage. We will be reading some good books that talk about shapes, A Circle here, a square there and Shape me a rhyme: Nature’s forms in poetry. We will also begin taking books home in our book bags!

A note from the teacher

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween and a nice weekend. Thank you so much for all the orange treats that we had for our parties. The children all looked so cute!

I wanted to thank you all for helping our class by providing the items needed on our list. It is greatly appreciated! I have listed a 20 gallon reptile tank, for our guinea pig. We have a 10 gallon tank now but she really needs more room. It would be wonderful if someone had a gently used one or if you see one at a yard sale but I definitely don’t want you to feel that you need buy a new one (they run about $60 with the lid).

We are going to start a library system in our class, with book bags, the children will be able to take a class book home and then bring it back the next time they come to school.

If you haven’t turned in your Questions Sheet for Conference I ask that you please do that by Wednesday, so I have them before conferences. I will put out a list with conference times.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be discussing books and we will even try to make our own book. We will be decorating our book bags and illustrating pages for our book. Then on Thursday and Friday we have parent conferences, so there is no class on those days.

Word Wall

The Letter of the week for the next two weeks will be the letter S. Then we will move on to the letter T for two weeks. I like talking about the letter for two weeks in a row, it seems that the children benefit from two weeks to explore the letter.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

I hope everyone had a wonderful time at the Pumpkin Patch. I had a great time except the batteries in my camera were dead Thursday morning so I had to borrow Teacher Keri’s camera. Needless to say there is a delay on some the pictures for that day. I tried my best to catch everyone with their pumpkins but I can’t promise anything, so if your child’s picture isn’t there I apologize.

If you haven’t signed up for a Parent conference and would like to there are still spots available on Thursday afternoon, just see me (or email me) to set up a time.

I hope to see you at the Family Read-In on Tuesday. The Church is also having a dinner on Wednesday night, you should have gotten a flyer in your boxes. It sounds like a lot of fun.

A note from the teacher

We will be exploring pumpkins from the inside out. We will also paint our pumpkins as part of a group effort. We have some fun books that we will be reading this week. The Hallo-wiener is a fun book about trick or treating.
Teacher Veronica has agreed to read a book in Spanish for us at our Family Read-In night on Oct 28th 6:00-7:30. Parents and children are welcome to wear their Halloween costumes for the fun.

We will be having a Fall Party and the children are invited to wear their Halloween costumes on Thursday (Oct 30th) & Friday (Oct 31st). We will go “trick or treating” around the building. We will be making pizzas and sharing some orange colored treats. We try to keep it kind of low key because they have such a big day with Halloween any way. If you would like to bring in an orange colored treat (cheetos, carrots, or anything else you can dream up) to share we would appreciate it very much.

A note from the teacher

Pictures are this Monday October 20th and Tuesday October 21st. If you haven’t sent in a packet there are a few extra packets available.

Just a reminder about Field trips…..
On days that we have field trips there is no class and children must have an adult responsible for them and their transportation to and from. Oh and have your child wear their Purple Shirt, even if we have to wear coats over them.

Our Bi-Zi Farm Field trip is this Thursday & Friday Oct 23rd & 24th, the morning class will meet out there at 9:30 and the afternoon class will meet at 12:30. If it has been raining I recommend rain boots, it can get messy out there! Also bring plastic bags to carry your pumpkins home in, it’s easier for your child and less mess for you.

Teacher Veronica has agreed to read a book in Spanish for us at our Family Read-In night on Oct 28th 6:00-7:30. Parents and children are welcome to wear their Halloween costumes for the fun.

We will be having a Fall Party and the children are invited to wear their Halloween costumes on Thursday (Oct 30th) & Friday (Oct 31st). We will go “trick or treating” around the building. We will be making pizzas and sharing some orange colored treats. We try to keep it kind of low key because they have such a big day with Halloween any way. If you would like to bring in an orange colored treat to share we would appreciate it very much.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week is one of my favorite weeks in the school year! I love going to the farm! The kids have such a great time seeing all the animals and finding that one special pumpkin that they can carry all by themselves! They are amazing and learning how to do so much on their own. We encourage them to do as much on their own as possible. Putting on their coats and pouring their own juice is just the beginning! Now back to this week, we are going to read this really fun book The Big Red Barn and will be doing some activities that go along with that as we wait for the real thing. Our letter for this week and next week will be the letter Pp.

A note from the teacher

If you plan on going to the play Click Clack Moo in February, we need to have payment by
October 13th so that we have an accurate head count for the ticket office.

The Current Fundraiser is due by Oct 15th at the latest but you can order online any time during the year and our school will benefit from the sales.

Our Bi-Zi Farm Field trip is also coming up on Oct 23rd & 24th, the morning class will meet out there at 9:30 and the afternoon class will meet at 12:30. They have a petting zoo and a hay maze besides the tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. Siblings are welcome to attend at no charge unless they are picking a pumpkin and then the price is $4.00 per child, you can pay at the farm in the store. The children MUST carry their own pumpkin. The farm is strictly enforcing their “Each child must carry their own pumpkin” rule. If parents carry the pumpkins they will be charged by the pound for their pumpkins.

Our Family Read-In night is on Oct 28th 6:00-7:30. Parents and children are welcome to wear their Halloween costumes for the fun. Teacher Veronica has agreed to read a book in Spanish for us!

The children are invited to wear their Halloween costumes on Thursday (Oct 30th) & Friday (Oct 31st). We will go “trick or treating” around the building. We will be making pizzas and sharing some orange colored treats. We don’t make a big deal of this party but our Christmas party will be held in Hessletine and we invite all the parents to attend.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

During the next two weeks we will be exploring farms. What grows on farms and what animals live on farms? We will make some art with vegetables as well as make vegetable soup. The letter this week for our word wall is C. Our first week of the word wall was big success. We put the words up in English & in Spanish, some of the words that were brought in are:

Frog – Rana
Friend – Amigo
Flower- Flor
Fish- Pescado
Face – Cara
Feet – Pies

A note from the teacher

It’s so good to back and to be done with the assessments! I feel like I have been out of the classroom for weeks. I have to apologize for the lack of pictures over the last couple of weeks, now that assessments are completed we will be back to a more normal day. We have a lot of information that we need to share with you, it is such a busy time of year. Please check the Important Date Section for activities that are going on, so you don’t miss any of the happenings.

If you plan on going to the play Click Clack Moo in February, we need to have payment by October 13th so that we have an accurate head count for the ticket office.

Our school is planning a Halloween Read-In on Oct. 28th from 6:30 – 8:00. You can bring your blankets and pillows along with your favorite books. Children can come in their costumes if they wish. We are trying to arrange for the Vancouver Police Department to come and talk about Halloween Safety.

Our Bi-Zi Farm Field trip is also coming up on Oct 23rd & 24th, the morning class will meet out there at 9:30 and the afternoon class will meet at 12:30. They have a petting zoo and a hay maze besides the tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. Siblings are welcome to attend at no charge unless they are picking a pumpkin and then the price is $4.00 per child. The children MUST carry their own pumpkin. The farm is strictly enforcing their “Each child must carry their own pumpkin” rule. If parents carry the pumpkins they will be charged by the pound for their pumpkins.

If you like your child to have a tie dyed shirt please bring one in this week and will dye them next week so that they will be ready for the field trip.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we will be exploring fall. The differences in trees and leaves, and how we can be friends to trees. We will create some colorful fall art with our hands. We will create some leaf collages, so during the week help your child collect some leaves and bring them into class for our collages and a sorting game. We are also starting our Word Wall, each week we will talk about a different letter. This weeks letter is F. We encourage you to help your child find an object or something out of a magazine that begins with the Letter of the Week. They can place the item in our pelican that is hung on the wall by our calendar and then we will write the name of the item on a paper in English and in Spanish and place it on our Word Wall. Speaking of Spanish, since Teacher Veronica is Bilingual we have been slowly integrating Spanish words into our day. We do the calendar in both English and Spanish. We say the month and count in Spanish. We will eventually add the days of the week. We also say please and thank you in both languages. Ask your child if they remember how to say thank you in Spanish.

October – Octubre
Please - Por favor
Thank you - Gracias
One -Uno
two - dos
three -tres
four -cuatro
five - cinco
six-seises

A note from the teacher

The children visited the “grandma’s & grandpa’s” at Vencore last week and did a great job. We made cards to take to them, the residents really liked them and the children liked sharing them, we all took our smiles to share too.
We will be starting assessments this week, we make it a stress free as possible by playing games with the them to asses fine & gross motor. Pre-academics will also be assessed. The results will be discussed with you at conferences in November.

I thought it would be great if we could tie dye shirts purple, like our door, so that we could all wear them on field trips. If you would like your child to have a tie dyed shirt just bring one in by October 8th, that way we will have plenty of time to get them back before our Farm Field Trip.

I just want to remind you that I will be out of town Thursday & Friday of this week. I will be back next week on Tuesday. Teacher Sarah will be helping out in the morning and Teacher Donna will be there in the afternoon, they’re both great with children.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

We have been busy making new friends and want to reinforce our new friendships. We will be making a friendship mix. Each taking turns adding ingredients to our Friendship Mix. (Cereal, Pretzels, and a few M&M’s) We will be creating some art as friends; each child will create a painting with their friend, making two- one for each of them. We will also play “the shape of friend”, picking a shape from the pile and finding the friend with the matching shape. They will be “Shape buddies” all day, we will encourage them to sit by each other at snack and help each other & play with each other during the day. A great way to build friendships is to have play dates with other Sunshine kids. I will have a sign up sheet out for those of you who would like to be included in a Sunshine Class Directory.

A note from the teacher

I just want to thank you all for such a great start to the new school year, I am really excited about the group we have and look forward to building on a great beginning. If we haven’t received your child’s pictures we still need them. You probably wont get these pictures back so please send copies. We need one for their Bucket, one of your family, and one of your child doing something that they enjoy (like them on the beach or swimming). We would also really like pictures of your homes for our block area.
The bikes are out and ready to go. So if your child wants to ride them, they will need to bring a helmet to wear. You can just hang them up on the coat hooks outside our classroom. Please make sure that they have your child’s name written in them. Its really a good idea to label everything that comes to school with your child. It’s also a great idea to send extra clothes in case of accidents, you know what I mean J but also there are juice spills too. Also please send your child in play clothes or clothes that its ok to get messy in. We have a lot of fun projects that some times end up all over us, me included. We do wear paint shirt but sometimes that is just not enough to contain our fun!
To stop the spread of germs in our class, we ask that you please take your child to the bathroom and wash their hands before they come into class. We want to keep the sick count down as much as possible. If your child is sick please call the office and let them know what’s going on, we worry about you when your gone.

Speaking of being absent, I will be out of town on Thursday 9-25, Friday 9-26 and Monday 9-29. My son will be graduating from Navy boot camp on that Friday, so my family will be traveling to Chicago to see him. In the morning classes Teacher Sarah will be there to help Teacher Veronica and in the afternoon Teacher Marissa will be helping out. The children will have fun painting a Friendship painting together that week.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

We will be talking about our similarities and our differences this week. We will look at some
X-Rays and talking about our bodies. How they are the same and different, like some of us wear glasses and some of us are taller than others. We will do a “How are we alike?” comparison. In our preparation for visiting Vencore we will also be talking about different ages. I thought we should make cards for them. It will be fun for us and the residents love to get anything the children make.

A note from the teacher

We had a great first week ! I hope you were able to go on to our blog and find the pictures of the first week. I usually only upload them on Fridays for the whole week. Speaking of pictures, if we haven’t received your child’s pictures we still need them. You probably wont get these pictures back so please send copies. We need one for their Bucket, one of your family, and one of your child doing something that they enjoy (like them on the beach or swimming).
I am also sending home a book this week that you and your child can fill out and decorate together. It’s a book about your child & family that we would like to keep in the classroom. Children like to be able to look at the pictures and show their friends, they also love to see their families during the day.
Every month we take a trip across the street to visit the “grandmas & grandpa’s” at Vencore. The kids do such a great job bringing a smile to the people’s faces! They sing songs for them and then go around shaking hands and saying hello. We talk about this during class and we read a book about grandma’s & grandpa’s. The dates we are going this month are listed under Important Dates. We go at 10:15 am in the morning and the second date we also go at 1:45 in the afternoon. You are welcome to join us anytime you would like. We try to leave Little Acorn by 10:00 and 1:30 to get over there on time.

This Week in the Sunshine Class

This week we are talking about ourselves, what we like to eat, the colors we like, and the activities we like to do. We’ll talk about our families and what makes us special. We will create some books about what we like that we will keep here in the class. We will also make a poster about what we like. As a class we will create some class guidelines to follow to make us all happy!! We will also talk about Living vs. Non-Living things because part of what makes us special is being alive!

First Week of School

We survived the first week of preschool!! I'm happy to say that we had very few tears and it was a great first week. We all worked on glueing and painting art work for our new bulletin board that will be up sometime next week.

We are working on getting pictures on all the buckets. Speaking of pictures, I have created a new album on Snapfish of the first week. Since the children had name tags on this week I wasn't able to use all the pictures I took this week. If your child isn't in the pictures, its because they were wearing a name tag and for safety reasons we won't connect names with faces.

We look forward to our next week together and remember if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for sharing your children with us.

Open House

Thank you all for coming to the open house. It was so nice meeting you all, it was fun putting the names with the faces. We are looking forward to the our year together.

I've already made a change, I created a new photo link so that only this years Sunshine Kids will be on the page. I will post pictures at the end of the first week.

Thank you for bringing in your pictures, if you haven't brought in your pictures heres what we need.....One for their bucket, one of something the enjoy, one of your family, and one of your house(for our building area).

I hope you all have a great weekend and we'll see you next week... :)

Welcome to the Sunshine Class

We want to welcome you to our classroom and want tell you how excited we are for the coming school year. We hope to see at the Open House on August 28th from 3:00-5:00. We invite you to come explore the classroom and visit with us. We look forward to building our relationship with your family. So now down to some information....

We have an online classroom album through Snapfish, the link is to the right.You will have to sign up for a Snapfish account to be able to view the pictures. It is password protected for security purposes, only you can access the pictures. The password is in the newsletter that you will receive. You will be able to order prints online as well as see your child’s smiling face.

So speaking of pictures, we need a couple of pictures of your child for our class. You wont get these pictures back until the end of the year so please send copies. We need one for their Bucket, on of your family, and one of your child doing something that they enjoy.

The first few day of school can be hard ( on the parents I mean) So I encourage you to have positive energy when you bring your child to school and say a short good bye at the door. Teacher Veronica and myself will help them adjust and find a fun activity to do. You need to convey to your child that school is a safe fun place and you know that they are going to be fine. They need to know that you have confidence in them and their ability to go to school and make new friends.

We look forward to building a positive partnership with you so if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to talk with me after school or you can always reach me at the phone numbers in the newsletter or by email.