Have a wonderful vacation!

Have a wonderful vacation and see you in the New Year!

Special thanks to Mrs. McDonald for taking some great photos during our classroom holiday party. You can view them here: Granoth Holiday Party


Thank you to Mrs. Morgan for coming in as our Mystery Reader this week! Happy Birthday to Rachel!


Check out some other fun photos from our week:

The children got to join their 3rd Grade Book Buddies for an all-school Sing-Along in the gymnasium.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Today during our Friday Free Write block, the children listened to a read aloud of How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. The children listened and identified ways that Dr. Seuss was able to enhance his story through details, fun words, his characters, rhyming, and more. Many of the children chose to close their eyes during the read aloud to picture the story in their minds rather than see the illustrations on the paper. Following the read aloud, the kids made a choice of whether they would like to be The Grinch or a Who on Christmas. In our groups, we brainstormed how each character would celebrate Christmas and also incorporated our Open Circle lesson of feelings into the discussion. How would you feel on Christmas if you were The Grinch? How would you celebrate Christmas if you were a Who? The kids were then sent off to illustrate and write about their character choices, really focusing on letter sounds and stretching out their words. We were all sure to remember that every sentence must end with a period!
We can't wait to show you our creative writing at our holiday party on December 21st! (More details to come...)

Check out our "Liam Grinch" and "Melanie-Lou-Who"!

So happy to play together on the playground on this sunny December day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The kids did a fantastic job this week performing in their show as well as the 1st ever Turkey Trot! Way to go Barrows Shining Stars! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Happy Veteran's Day

In Writer's Workshop the children are continuing to develop their labeling skills. As they illustrate their pictures, they begin to sound out beginning, some middle, and ending sounds for the words they are creating. The children know that in order to be a good writer, friends reading their stories need to know what their story is about.Labeling helps the reader understand who is in the story and what the story is about.

Written by: Edward

Written by: Emily

On this past Tuesday, the kids participated in an all-school assembly that taught about the importance of why we celebrate the Veteran's Day holiday. We were proud to honor veterans from actual Barrows families. 

Check out Melanie doing a great job during her Morning Meeting Sharing time.....

Happy Halloween

Our party on Friday was a success! Thank you to all those who were able to attend and assist their little ones with crafts! Also, a HUGE thank you to Sue Fitzgerald and Jenny McDonald for organizing and planning the room party! Check out some photos of our fun day:

Granoth Halloween Party

Way to go Shining Stars!

The children have had a lot of fun this week playing our game of "Sparkle!". The game is very basic and can be modified to support almost any learning goal throughout our entire year. Currently, the kids have been playing Sparkle to strengthen their skills of counting using 1:1 correspondence. We will also use this as we begin to segment and blend words in Fundations!

We have continued to talk in class about "What good writers do" and we are now beginning to look at "What good readers do" as well as what they physically look like when reading. This week, the kids began to practice reading to self as well as "Eek". Eek stands for elbow to elbow, knee to knee. This acronym reminds the children of what their bodies should look like when reading with or to a friend.

In Writer's Workshop we continued to discuss "What good writers do". The children now know that in order to be a good writer, they must first be a good storyteller using five or more details in their stories as well as being good illustrators of their pictures. On Wednesday, the children practiced drawing people and characters in their stories using only ovals and circles to form the body parts. This was even a challenge for Mrs. Granoth, as I like to draw stick people! The children really did a great job following this process and came up with some pretty realistic looking people for their stories!

On Thursday the children participated in an all-school A.L.I.C.E. Safety Drill. Mrs. Leonard as well as our School Safety Officer, Officer Muolo, came around to each Kindergarten classroom and complimented the kids on a job well done.

Please remember to send your child in with their red cloth browsing bags on Monday! Have a wonderful weekend!

We LOVE learning how to read!

This week 1/2 Day Kindergarten began their whole group guided reading work. The kids walked into the lesson saying, "No way, Mrs. Granoth. I CAN'T read!!!!" My answer was, "You can't read, YET, but by the end of today you will!" They thought I was crazy! Well by the end of our reading block that day, the kids proudly realized that they COULD read all by themselves! Hip hip hooray!

From now until the first of the year, I prefer to do whole group (whole class) guided reading lessons with the kids. These books are fairly simple for the children to confidently decode and they really become proud of their successes. Following the 1st of the year, I will begin to meet with smaller guided reading groups of 4-5 children where I can really focus in on all of their individual strengths and needs.

Each week the children will bring home a new paper book added to their red cloth browsing bags. Please read these books over the weekends with your children! They are so proud to share with all of you. Please remember to bring browsing bags back in each Monday. If for some reason we have a holiday or you forget the bag, please always send it in the following day so that we may continue to add to their book collections.

Looking forward to our upcoming Halloween and Thanksgiving celebrations. More information to come on both! Have a wonderful weekend!

Hard at Work

I hope everyone enjoyed a long weekend home with their Kinders! As usual, we have been busy as ever in Kindergarten! We of course all loved our Pajama Day reward day last week! Mr. Potatohead was taken apart following this special day and the kids are working hard to put him back together again. For every positive behavior compliment they receive, he will get a piece put back together.

We joined the rest of the Barrows School last Tuesday for an assembly. Mrs. Becker, our Assistant Principal, talked all about our Barrows Beliefs of being safe, respectful, persevering, and collaborating. As we progress in our classroom Open Circle curriculum, the children will learn what each of these big words means to them both at home and at school.

The children dove right into our Lucy Calkins Writer's Workshop program this past week. They learned that in order to be a great writer, they must first be a great storyteller. They enjoyed pairing up with each other and working on telling detailed stories about important moments in their own lives. On Friday, the kids took their storytelling and began to illustrate drawings to accompany their great stories!

Please enjoy some photos of the kids hard at work from this past week!

We LOVE Kindergarten!

Another busy week for us here in 1/2 Day Kindergarten! We learned 4 new uppercase Letters of the Week on Monday: D, P, B, and R. We enjoy practicing how these letters are formed through our Monday stations where we build the letters using wood, cotton balls and playdoh! We read Chrysanthemum in class yesterday and talked about how special each and every one of our names were. In Fundations, we have been reviewing the sounds for lowercase letters t, b, f, m, and n. We will be starting to learn the letter/sound recognition for i and u later this week. In math, we are getting to be experts at our counting out loud as well as our number writing. We have learned how to properly form the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 by singing to the tune of "Skip To My Lou My Darlin". Ask one of your kiddos and they will be happy to sing it for you!
Mrs. Leonard came in to meet the class today and read a book called "What Do You Do With An Idea?" by Mae Besom. She was even nice enough to donate it to our classroom library once she was finished reading it! Tomorrow Nurse Rose will be in our classroom to talk about proper hygiene and hand-washing rules. Check out a couple pictures from our week so far!

And we're off!

What a busy and exciting first two weeks in Kindergarten it has been! The kids have really adjusted nicely to our schedule and learning environment. I'm already so proud of each and every one of them. We have been extremely busy learning lots of new things in our classroom. In Fundations, the children have learned letter id and sounds for the letters t,f, and b. You may notice over the upcoming weeks that our Fundations program will be changed just a bit. We are going to be focusing on sounds of lowercase letters and the formation of uppercase letters. This is a change from what was presented at Curriculum Night. Information regarding this change will be coming your way soon as it is a district wide modification.

In math the children have been working hard at proper number formation for the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 as well as 1:1 correspondence when counting out loud. We have been talking about things that are the same and things that are different and what physical attributes make them such. Each morning we practice our counting. This is something you can do for fun at home as well! A Kindergarten end of year goal is for all children to be able to count out loud to at least 100!

In the upcoming weeks, I will be sending out volunteer information. If you are interested in volunteering in our classroom for our literacy and/or Writer's Workshop blocks, we would love to have you! We generally ask for 1-2 parent volunteers for each block. I understand that many parents work and are unable to commit to this, so please don't feel any pressure that this is expected! There will also be ample opportunity to come in to be a Mystery Guest Reader for your child's birthday and other fun events.

Also in the upcoming weeks, I will be sending home a phone and email contact list for all of the parents and students in our classroom. This list was really useful last year when coordinating play dates and birthday parties. I am just waiting on a few more families to get their paperwork back into me and then I will send these out.

Lastly, a HUGE happy birthday to Owen this weekend! Thank you, Mrs. Gallagher, for coming in as our Mystery Guest Reader on Friday!