Principal’s Message
One of the best parts of the day as Principal of Blythwood is visiting classrooms and having students share their work with me in my office. Each day I get to share in the learning process and am very inspired by the great work students are experiencing through challenging themselves to work towards higher level thinking skill development.
Our amazing Blythwood staff are continually planning engaging lessons with higher order thinking in mind and will continue this work in the new school year. Over the next few weeks, teachers will be meeting together to plan for the next school year. Their planning session agendas will include continued incorporation of higher order thinking skills, student voice, literacy, global learning and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) lesson planning development. We will be connecting the school budget with these priorities and will be utilizing funds generously raised by our parent community to support classroom enrichment opportunities as well.
On Wednesday, May 30thBlythwood had the wonderful opportunity to host Jake S. from grade 3, Ms. Singh’s class as Principal For The day. Principal Jake had a very busy day working to support staff and students at Blythwood. Amongst many of the cool things Principal Jake put into place were green ice cubes and cartoon Band-Aids for potential students’ office visits for first aid. A greeeeeeat hit for kindergarten students who had a bunch more visits than usual for ice and Band-Aids (-: He made the day a crazy hair day and added an extra-long recess for grade 3 students to enjoy their Freezies and to play with awesome outdoor games and bubbles purchased by Vice Principal Bailey! Jake thoroughly enjoyed reading to classes, hosting kindergarten BINGO, visiting and talking to students in many classrooms, doing morning announcements, waving goodbye to grade 5 students going to Island school as well as many other office duties. He was also treated to his very own favourite lunch, cheese PIZZA! Is there anything else?! Principal Jake was an excellent role model for the students and asked so many interesting questions. It was a wonderful day and I am sure it will be one that we both will remember for a long time!
It was our great pleasure to host the Blythwood Volunteer Tea in the gym. Our choir gave a special performance to honour our incredible volunteers and our students from our entire school created posters expressing their great appreciation for all of the time and effort the volunteers at Blythwood put in to make our school an outstanding place to work and learn. Thank you!
Students from our Huddle Up student anti-bullying committee had the great pleasure to attend a city-wide celebration of anti-bullying with Mr. Zamora. The students listened to inspiring messages of overcoming adversity and were able to meet numerous football players and cheerleaders at MLSE centre. They came back with new ARGOS hats, autographed of course, in addition to many life lessons.
LET’S GO BLUE JAYS! Many students, staff and parents had the wonderful opportunity to attend at Blue Jays game on May 24th. Students loved creating Blue Jays posters and enjoyed cheering on the Jays with a lot of other schools from TDSB. Thanks to all parents and staff who made this trip a great deal of fun despite bus delays!
Grade 6 students had an incredible time at Ottawa this past month. So many memories of an incredible trip were made that will last a lifetime. I am very appreciative of all of the time and effort and evenings away from their own families that Ms. Khan, Ms. Shnaider and Mr. Nikita put forth in order to make this trip occur and such an incredible success for our students.
Grade 5 students had a wonderful time at Island School this past week. Stories, night walks, deconstructed cabbage rolls for supper were just a few of the high lights of this stellar lifelong memory-making experience. A big shout out to Mr. Caulford, Ms. Ugolini and Ms. Truman for all of their time and effort to make this trip so amazing and for taking time away from their families to make this trip occur. Thank you must also go to all of the staff back at Blythwood for supporting in so many ways as well. A wonderful team effort!
Parent council executive, TDSB facilities and Blythwood PS staff have been completing final consultation regarding the portable that will be coming to our school in September. We are awaiting the results of the consultation with board staff regarding the specific placement details. More information will be forthcoming when we receive this report.
The Current News form the PSA/PSC
Here we are almost at the end of the year Blythwood! The weather has been amazing and it’s so nice to see kids and parents hanging out on the playground after school. May started off with a lovely volunteer appreciation tea hosted by Ms. Bailey and the teachers. Since then, we’ve been sprinting though the month and our students have been lucky enough to have some great parent volunteers for the Track & Field team. A big thank you to Alex Tinmouth, Vanessa Bennett, Suzy Wilcox, Amy Clarke, Brian Stemmle, Sherrie Berdusco, Andrew Sulkowski and of course Mr. Haywood. Go Bulldogs!
Many of our children have been practicing hard for the upcoming Shining Lights talent show. The Talent Show committee, Jessica Booth, Julie McCartney, Amy Pandori, Erica Sloane, Natalia Ritchie andBecky Greenhouse,have been doing a wonderful job, running the auditions and coordinating the whole talent night. Thank you as well to Mr. Nikitafor helping with all things technical. We are so grateful for the time and effort you are all putting in and we look forward to an entertaining evening!
Speaking of time and effort – we must give another huge thank you to our amazing Gala committee co-chaired by Christine McDonaldand KristyLuciani. The numbers are in and wowza, we raised over $47,000!! This was an exceptional year; we raised almost 10,000 more than previous years. Thank you for all of your generous donations!
Our last general meeting is scheduled for June 14that 8:45amin the library. At this meeting we will be discussing how we will use our funds to help support the school as well as we will be voting in new members to join the Executive School Council. If you are interested in any of the following positions, Director of Fundraising orSchool Support, please email our Volunteer Coordinator Chrystal Saffer, , to put your name on the ballot. Thank you to the MANY parents who continue volunteer at school for the various events and activities – we really appreciate it!!
We are happy to announce that we have been working on a website for Blythwood. We are hoping a centralized location of information will be beneficial to all parents. Thank you to the fantastic Caren Thomas for donating her time and creativity to create the site. This is one of the many reasons she was crowned Prom Queen. We will let you know when it’s officially up and running. Also, if you are either technically inclined or love to write copy we would love to create a website team. If you’re interested please reach out to Chrystal, .
Enjoy the Sunshine Blythwood,
Jennifer Dysart &
Amy Pandori
Co-Chairs PSA/PSC
Cheers to Our Parent Volunteers!
On behalf of all the staff at Blythwood, we would like to extend a huge thank you to the amazing parents who volunteer at our school.
It is with your unconditional care and support that our students are given the best academic experiences possible. We appreciate your genuine commitment and relentless dedication to our school!
Leave a Reply