Welcome to Thornapple Elementary!
This website contains a variety of information about our school of interest to you and your child attending Thornapple. Please contact us if you have specific questions or comments and will be be happy to help you.
Principal’s Welcome Letter
Welcome to Thornapple Elementary School located within the Forest Hills School District, one of our Nation’s great public school systems! Thornapple sits in the quiet well-maintained neighborhood known as Cascade Acres, just a short walk from the beautiful Thornapple River.
Thornapple Elementary is a K-4 building with a student enrollment that hovers around 415 students. In addition to a rigorous elementary curriculum, all of our full-time students receive sixty minutes a week of physical education, music, art, and world language (Spanish).
We invite you to explore our school website and learn more about the district and what makes Thornapple so unique. The site offers many exciting facts, figures, features and functionality: with the school and District calendars, school directories, District-wide and school specific news updates. We hope you find this information useful.
Whether you are a prospective family, parent, student, or a community stakeholder, we hope you find this website to be a useful resource for information. However, even with the best modern technology has to offer, sometimes there is no substitute for a human connection. We invite you to visit our main office, email us, or contact our main office number at (616) 493-8920 where we will be happy to help you.
Thank you for your interest in and your support of Thornapple Elementary School.
Sincerely,
David Lyon
Principal
Points of Pride
- The Thornapple PTO sponsors a walk-a-thon for fitness day in September. This event raises the awareness of life-long fitness and generated funds for further PTO sponsored activities.
- Thornapple continued its pen pal relationship with its sister school in Perugia, Italy. Throughout the year,students exchanged letters, drawing and video. The year concluded with a live web cam event in June.
- The Cultural Arts Committee, in conjunction with Thornapple’s Art Teachers, held a school–wide Art Fair that exhibited the individual work of every Thornapple student.
- Thornapple students participated in many cultural arts activities. Some of these activities included school sponsored trips to the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, Civic Theatre and in-school presentations by GRSO Orchestra members, The Mully Children’s Family Choir, the Mackinaw Touring Company and several assemblies.
- The Thornapple school community considered the needs of others through:
- Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Academy Benefit Dinner
- Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Academy “Giving Tree”
- MLK Coin Challenge
- Make-A-Wish Foundation
- Kent County Humane Society
- Kids Food Basket
- Local Clothing Drive
- Head-to-Toe – Book and Shoe Collection
- Each grade level presented spectacular musical presentations. The fourth grade musical was held at the Forest Hills Fine Arts Center.
- Thornapple recognized over sixty volunteers at its annual volunteers’ luncheon in the spring.
- Three Thornapple Odyssey of the Mind teams competed at regionals.
- The PTO Carnival provided families a chance to get together and have fun.
- 74% of the Thornapple Staff participated in the Institute for Healing Racism training or Champions of Diversity training.
- The Thornapple’s Got Talent, talent show was held and was a wonderful venue for students to share their talents with their peers and families.
- Thornapple received the Green School certificate for the third year in a row.
