February 2026 Kitelet
Dear GCS Families,
February has been an exciting and busy month in our classrooms as we continue to learn, grow, and build strong relationships together. Despite some of the very cold and wintry weather, our school has been filled with fun and learning, and our playground has been filled with adventurous sledding, snow exploration, and so many wonderful social connections. It is always exciting to see children from other classrooms come together outside to practice and explore new friendships, as we help guide them in their play and sharing, turn taking, kindness, and social interactions. These early social experiences help children develop empathy, confidence, and strong communication skills that will help them to be successful throughout their lives.
Literacy Everyday
While Literacy happens throughout each and every day — during story time, dramatic play, songs, rhymes, and conversations – our Valentine’s celebrations naturally helped to expand on our year-long theme of “Story Seeds: Planting a Love for Literacy”. Creating messages, exploring print, writing/recognizing friends’ names, making special cards, and “mailing” Valentines naturally supports and strengthens Literacy development. Children are building vocabulary, recognizing upper- and lower-case letters (especially in their names!), learning about the many concepts of print, and developing a love of books. Reading familiar stories again and again helps children gain confidence and deeper understanding, and we encourage families to enjoy repeated readings at home as well. And speaking of Literacy, we are excited to share that we recently migrated to a new library administration system, Accessit, into our GCS Library. This will help us with organizing, tracking, and locating titles so much easier and in a timelier fashion. Our teachers are all excited about this recent upgrade for the ease of finding, tracking, and checking out books for their classrooms. The Kindergarten children visit our library each week as part of their curriculum and have been experimenting and working out the kinks for us all to enjoy.
100 Days
WOW! We can’t believe it has already been 100 days of school?! Thank you to the Kindergarten Class for featuring children’s math, literacy and creative abilities with their individual projects for this year’s 100 Day Museum! 100 is A LOT! All of our classes visited and admired the Museum displays in our GCS Children’s Library this week.
Registration Update
It was wonderful to see parents conferencing with their children’s teachers early this month. Registration for the 2026-27 school year is well underway. Acceptance letters have been sent to currently enrolled families, and offer phone calls are being made to families in the community. Please remember that tuition deposits are due TODAY. (We can extend until Monday morning if you’re reading this and haven’t yet submitted payment.) Please know that juggling classroom placements of children takes time and may not be completely finalized for a while.
GCS Open House
Our GCS Annual Open House is this Sunday, March 1st from 11 AM to 1 PM for families to come visit the school in person and to meet Teachers, Staff & Board members. Please be sure to let friends and neighbors who may be interested in GCS in the future to stop in for an introduction to our school.
Special Event
Please join us for a “Kids Hairstyling Workshop” on Thursday, March 12th from 5:15 – 6:15 in the Community Room. Tickets are $10 per child/adult combo and can be purchased online at Eventbrite..
Friendly Reminders…
We’d like to provide you with a few friendly reminders as we continue through the rest of Winter months:
- Please continue sending labeled winter clothing to school so children can comfortably enjoy outdoor play.
- Outdoor time remains an important part of our daily routine whenever weather permits.
- Thank you for helping us maintain a healthy school community by keeping children home when they are ill and notifying our Wellness Email.
As always, we are grateful for your partnership and for the opportunity to learn alongside your children each day. Watching friendships grow and confidence blossom has been a highlight of this month. Thank you for being such an important part of our school community.
Thank You!
Special thanks to Dr. Brian Ganley Family Dentistry here in Groton along with his Assistant, Jenny, and Office Manager, Christine, for generously closing their practice early to visit some of our classrooms this week. Since this is dental awareness month, we are grateful for their time and education of caring for our teeth with good habits, good eating, and good care.
Thank you to the BIG Room families for our “Fun Friday” Valentine’s smorgasbord before the Winter break. Teachers are always so excited and appreciative of these monthly treats! We’d also like to thank February’s “Stock-the-Staff-Room” volunteers: Jack Carlson, Sarah Cleary, Jillian Doyle, Kristina Hepburn, Jessica Larrabee, Bethany McGuiggan, and Adriana Sanchez.
Thanks to the following families for their contributions to the school in February: The Lampros & Tomaino families for snacks for the staff; the Stella family for books; and to former GCS teacher, Inga Nuccio, for various books, games, and curriculum materials.
Until next time,
Linda Kosinski, GCS Director