Mrs. Baltos' Kindergarten

We have been learning SO many things this past month.  First, THANK you for sending in items for your child's letter.  They turned out great! We also has a visitor from Chewonki come to talk with us about owls!  We got to see several different kinds of owls.   In math, we recently finished the 2D shape unit.  We made 2D shapes out of marshmallows and toothpicks.  We have been reading stories about the Gingerbread man!  We made puppets to help retell the story. (They went home on Wednesday- so I hope your child was able to share it with you!) Also, Mrs. Miller made the whole Kindergarten a giant gingerbread cookie!  We had it cooked in the school oven, but then it ran away!  We hope that our gingerbread returns, so that we can eat it up! In other news, as a K team, we have started flexible literacy groups.  This allows for us to target the reading needs for your child!  Your child may have come home say

We have learned all of the letters in the alphabet!  On Friday, Nov. 30th, we will be celebrating our learning by making the letters out of objects.  Your child has already selected a letter and information was sent home in red folders.  If you are unsure which letter your child has, please let me know!  baltosst@spsd.org. Below are some completed alphabets from previous years.  Please send in items for your child's letter.  For example, jelly beans for the letter J.  I can't wait to see what what child brings to school for our celebration!

We have been learning SO much this month!  Make sure to scroll for all of the pictures since there are a lot! We learned about the pumpkin lifecycle and finished the pumpkin unit with some pumpkin math.  Students guessed how many cubes it would take to measure to the top of the pumpkin and how many seeds were inside.  Then we got to count the seeds inside!  There were about 457! We have also been working on reading books, practicing the "popcorn" words, and handwriting.  We learned a new math game: Top it!  Students compare numbers on a card. After attending an amazing conference last week, I learned about the importance of a simple activity: Eye tracking.  I will be sharing more at parent teacher conferences, but basically this helps students improve their eyes not only to be better readers, better writers, and mathematicians.  And it can help them one day be better drivers! :) It was so cute to see two students pract

This month we will be focusing on Pumpkins.  We have started this learning a little bit. We are also continuing to learn all of the letters and letter sounds.  I hope to have finished this by the beginning on November so that we can really focus on reading and sight words.  We are also practicing counting syllables in words.  We will be learning rhyming soon! In writing, we have been writing true stories.  We are also practicing using the sight words (popcorn words) in our writing.  Below is a list of words that we have been working on and should know.  In math, we have been counting to 100 everyday!  We are also working on writing numbers, counting objects, and the concepts of more, less, and equal. Popcorn Words we have learned: I        a          the          see         go          is          am          an        can        has         like

Today students were learning to persevere.  We tried to throw pom-poms into a bin. We started off with the bin very close and moved it farther away after each time we made it.  Sometimes we made it in the bin and some times we did not.  We learned that it is OK if we miss.  We try again!  As Pete the Cat says, "Do we cry? Goodness, No! We keep on going!"  It is ok to feel sad, frustrated, disappointed, and mad, but we need to pick up the pom-pom and give another throw.  We will be talking about this concept a lot this year.  We also refer to this as "Growth Mindset."  We are learners who are growing every day! (Sorry for the blurry photos...we were very busy trying to throw the pom-poms!)