Mrs. Baltos' Kindergarten

Happy 100 days of Kindergarten! We had an exciting day celebrating 100 days of K today!  Students made necklaces will 100 beads, wrote to 100, ordered tiles to 100, made hats, built a tower with 100 cubes, and built with 100 cups! Lots of pictures below! We ended the day with a special visitor, Mrs. Connolly, to read to us: 100 Snowmen by Jen Arena. She has been visiting classrooms in our school as part of the Maine #ReadtoME challenge.   Save the Date! On Thursday, February 28th please join us for a literacy night at Skillin.  It is from 5:30-6:30pm.  We will have activities in many of the classrooms.  There will be raffles, books to check out in the library, and a ReadtoME photo booth!  I look forward to seeing you and your child there! Happy Vacation! Finally, I hope that you have a wonderful vacation!  I can't wait to see your child back to school on Monday, February 25th!  Enjoy! Love,  Mrs. Baltos ...

Hello! As part of a whole school community initiative and collaboration challenge, we were tasked with creating a structure that will last 5 days outside.  This past week, with inspiration from the story of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, we created our whole class structure.  We read many different versions of the story, including one of my favorites: The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig .  The story ends with the little wolves building a house from flowers, that help to change the Pig's heart and turn towards being a kind, good friend. Students started by making a list of materials and house structure ideas.  I love the idea of popcorn! And ice cream to make an ice cream house! Yum! Then students were set with the task of drawing and writing about their ideas (just like an engineer!) Finally, working as small groups, we completed our Pig House.  Materials include: paper towel and toilet paper rolls, straws, pipe cleaners, duct tape, ...

With winter here I wanted to send some reminders on how to keep us healthy at school.  Of course, I love seeing your child everyday, however, if your child is sick: Please keep him or her home. This is so important to keeping both students and staff healthy and prevents illness from spreading. Here are some friendly reminders, please keep your child home if: They have fever of 101 F or more.  They seem run down or more tired than usual.  This may be a sign that they are coming down with something.   They have diarrhea or are vomiting.   They have a contagious disease such as pinkeye, flu, strep throat, or something similar.  Please check with your doctor about treatment and to know when it is ok for your child to return to school. Thank you SO much for your help in keeping us all heathy!

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 ...