Sunrise Christian Preschool – Chinese Immersion Program

This is not a Chinese immersion school, they teach a few songs and a few words here and there, but your child will not leave this school knowing how to converse in Chinese.
I was touring potential preschools for my daughter. My first impression once I stepped into the facility was chaos! I wasn’t sure if it was free play but a few kids were crying, a few kids were fighting for each other’s toys and then another kid was being extremely aggressive with pushing a go cart into another go cart where a child was sitting in. This happened a few times, Ms. Connie asked the kid to play nicely — but that was it– the kid kept pushing the go cart into the other occupied go cart. I was hoping that I would see some sort of intervention with positive reinforcement in teaching why kids should be gentle and play nicely– there was none. Ms. Connie passively told the kid to be gentle and kept touring. Second impression, there were 3 teachers total to two groups of children totaling 25, so it would seem the student to teacher ratio is high. Third impression, Ms. Connie seemed a bit flustered and rushed during my entire tour of ten minutes. I’m sure parents would find this a perfect fit for their child, but the thought of having my child attend this facility was terrifying.
I should’ve have known during the phone conversation when I asked if I can tour the school, I said I was in the area, she quickly said sure she can, she’ll have another teacher look after her class — after touring the school and though the facility is small, I realize that she was already short staffed, having another teacher look after her class while giving me a tour tells me that her class or children do not come first. I’m glad I dropped in when I did, I truly saw how the kids interacted with each other. Or maybe I need to give her more credit, perhaps it was free play and giving a quick tour did not interrupt any important class time– nevertheless, kids are demanding and they should come first…
Please give this facility a tour before you make a commitment to enroll your child.

My daughter loves it here and loves Miss Connie (and all the other teachers too). I’m so blessed to find a school that accepts 2 year olds.
Miss connie is patient and extremely attentive. I was initially worried that My daughter would have a hard time adjusting because I have cared for her since birth, but I absolutely trust Miss connie to help nurture her. She did cry for a couple weeks, but now I can barely get my daughter to want to leave afterschool!
My daughter has learned so much already! I love how they teach Chinese also (Mandarin AND cantonese). I love seeing all the new things my daughter has learned already! I’m so confident that she will continue to excel in her future (academically, socially, and spiritually) based on the groundwork that Miss connie paved.
It seems like the negative reviews were regarding children who needed ‘extra’ attention (i.e speech issues or picky eaters). Btw, my daughter eats much more now! She gets exposed to more types of food at Sunrise and learns to try everything!

My son attended Sunrise for almost two years. Overall, I think the school was ok. Ms. Connie was responsive and accommodating. The school is small but with many advantages that bigger preschools don’t have.
However, I kind of agreed with Annie L’s review. Ms. Connie needs to slow down a bit in her teaching to allow kids to digest. In fact, Ms. Connie will do better if she is more positive about her kids’ potential even though they have not fully shown theirs. This is called positive encouragement and reinforcement. Instead of judging what kids can not do, Ms. Connie should encourage kids to develop to their full potential.
In fact, Ms. Connie was negative about my son’s progress and did not allow him to graduate from Sunrise. So we obtained some professional’s opinion on my son’s readiness for kindergarten. We were told that my son is very bright academically and by delaying him going to kindergarten would be extremely bad for him. Unfortunately, Ms. Connie did not see it that way.
Now, my son is doing well at kindergarten and improves everyday academically and socially. I hope Ms. Connie will be more positive with other kids who currently attend Sunrise when dealing with their learning potential.

My little guy has been at Sunrise since ⁴⁄₂₀₁₃ and he’s doing good.
We had him attend an academic preschool at age 2.5 and it was disastrous. It ended with him crying for pretty much the whole time he was there, hunger strike, and running away from car to transport him there. horrible! We did an about face and arranged for a small loving daycare to take him. It still took about 3 months before he stopped crying and the wrestling into car seat soon ended.
Needless to say, we were a little nervous as we made another transition. We needed a a small preschool that had a pretty caring environment and definitely one that is not too strict. It was important to me that it was Chinese speaking as I really want my guy to remain bilingual.
Sunrise fit the bill. It is very small, essentially a storefront on the Judah line, but I really like it. We were a little concerned about the transition and had shared with Ms. Connie and Ms. Christina. They invited us to bring our guy in for a couple of hours over a period of 2 – 3 weeks to get him oriented. That proved to be very good.
My guy still cried the first week or so, but he made friends soon enough and the festivities, with the mother’s day workshop amongst the moms, the family carnival in June, and the promotion/​graduation really helped with community building and making friends.
I have to mention that my little guy has a lot of food allergies and they have been great about accommodating us. We bring lunch in a few times/​wk and they reheat it for us. They make sure he doesn’t get anything with eggs and do check in with us about them.
Last month he had a little scratch from playing and I received a very professional report indicating what happened, and what interventions done to minister to injury. I really liked that.
Anyways… all in all, I am very satisfied with my little guy’s care.

I just recently pulled my daughter out of this preschool. She started Sunrise Febuary of this year, and the 4 months she was attending the school, she was never happy to go to school in the morning. First, my daughter is a really picky eater, but the school does not allow us to bring food from home. She had to eat whatever the school made. She would come home starving because she didn’t like the lunch they provided. My daughter is also a little delayed in her speech, and I was hoping this school would be a good fit for her because it is such a small school. I even had a speech therapist come to observe her. When I had my meeting with the therapist, they informed me that the teachers does circle time so fast that they don’t let the children process what they just learned, and for a child like my daughter who is a bit delayed, she would not be able to understand what was happening. They also said that the director, Connie was basically «complaining» about how my daughter can’t do a lot of the skills they were teaching there. The therapist said she felt like Connie was implying that my daughter wa an inconvenience on them. Another thing that really bothered me was one time my husband picked up early and all the children were at the table doing a project and my daughter just wanted to go home. But, Connie told her she could not leave until she was done, so my daughter stared to cry. The other children started to laugh at her and Connie did not tell the children to not laugh at her. I’ve also noticed that the children were not always supervised. A lot of the times, Connie will be the only one there with the children. When the children are in the yard and someone is ringing the doorbell, Connie would leave the yard to answer the door, but who is watching the children? And that is a fat licensing violation. The school is also not as clean as they claim. The bathroom sink is covered in disgusting mildew and all their toys in the yard are all old and broken. And finally what totally pissed me off and led me to write this bad review was that on my daughters last day at the school, they did not even say goodbye to my daughter or say they’ll miss her. When my husband picked her up from Sunrise, he told me that Connie just ignored him and was busy talking to other parents. So rude! My daughter is now attending a Bright Horizons and is happy to go to school every morning! And her speech is getting better everyday! I ask her everyday if she wants to go back to Connie’s school and she always tells me very loudly, «NO!»