This school year was off to an exciting start. All students and staff who were only online from previous school years have now returned full time. This meant that many of our SKC kids from pre covid have returned to be with us in person. We have also had many new teachers start with us here at our school. Lots of changes have happened, including the ability to mix cohorts in the SKC clubhouse again. This means larger and more diverse groups, just like what we were able to have before covid. We can also welcome special guests and take trips once again. Our students are very excited to have a sense of “normalcy” that we had before the pandemic.

To celebrate the release of Shania’s new song, “Waking up Dreaming”, we gathered some fun dress up items and shot our very own SKC Brampton music video. We wore wigs, costume jewellery, mustaches, you name it! We had an absolute BLAST and now our dress up bin is a permanent part of our SKC clubhouse.  On Orange Shirt Day, our students worked on their own orange shirts and watched a lovely presentation about the importance of orange shirt day. In the spirit of Fall and Thanksgiving, we gathered some fallen leaves from our playground and brought some into the clubhouse where we each wrote down what we are most thankful for and posted them to our bulletin board. We also discussed what fills our buckets as well as how we can be bucket fillers. On Halloween, our SKC kids received a treat bag full of goodies and craft/stationary items. Many of our students love Halloween, so these goodie bags are always exciting. Our school hosted a haunted house and Halloween dance which our students had so much fun participating in.  

In November, we welcomed The Travelling Stage to the clubhouse! They will be with us for one day a month until April to teach our students Drama and Dance, while tying in life skills, social skills, confidence building, relationship skills and more! We absolutely love having our instructor Shivani with us while she helps us develop our character through drama and dance. We developed an SKC Mentorship program, where some of our older students can mentor our younger students. This mentorship involves helping with schoolwork, reading together, teaching arts and crafts and more. It has been a great confidence builder for our older students and an excellent help for our younger students. We went to the Rose Theatre to see a live performance of “Cinderella”. It was a fabulous performance! Our students rated it a 10/10. They loved the fact that the actors and actresses represented a diverse set of backgrounds. This representation matters very much to our students. They cannot wait to go back one day!

SKC got a nice Christmas makeover again and our students LOVED putting up our tree and decorations. It is very important to our students to decorate the clubhouse. Some do not celebrate Christmas or cannot afford to have their home decorated, so for many, this is their only place to experience the seasonal festivities. Towards the end of the school year, we welcomed Sandy (SKC’s Managing Director) and Courtney (SKC Program Leader from Dwight) as well as some SKC students from Dwight. We had tons of fun getting to know each other/seeing each other again since we were apart for so long due to Covid. We had pizza and did some fun activities.

We would like to, once again, thank The Journey Neighbourhood Centre in Brampton for their help in rounding up generous donations of Christmas gifts for every single one of our students. This means so much to them and to us, so THANK YOU! Our students got to take home Christmas gifts as well as some Christmas treats and craft items. Their smiling faces say it all! We spent our last week making Christmas cards and crafts for the residents at the Tullamore Care Centre in Brampton as an act of kindness and Christmas cheer. We made a whopping 132 items!! We also chose a staff member (Our Principal Mrs. Solomon) and made her a lovely wooden gingerbread house. On our last day together before Christmas break, we had hot chocolate with marshmallows, pizza, some catered food from Churrasqueira D’ouro in Brampton, drinks and snacks in the clubhouse and watched The Grinch in our PJ’s. It’s been a great end to 2022 and we look forward to sharing our 2023 adventures with you. To all of you who donate to SKC, thank you so very much, we couldn’t do what we do without you.