Special Olympics Send Off

Each year at Ballentine we are so fortunate to get to participate in a school wide celebration and send off for our friends who compete in The Special Olympics. This is my most favorite day, we get to come out and celebrate these special friends as a school family. This year our class decided to make posters for our friends to cheer them on their way. We are so proud of their accomplishments. This year our friend Jocelyn will be competing with out her crutches! How awesome is that. You can see our posters below and watch us send off each of these four special friends. (If you'r at work, you may want to turn down the volume, we were cheering loudly!)

Motion Wheels

As we continue to study forces and motion in science we conducted our own experiments to see how things move. Using different size wheels and straws we tested our theories on how different objects can move. check out our pictures below.

Geometry Shape Making

Check out our cool geometric shapes we created while exploring our unit on geometry! Students have been learning about different polygons. Through explorations we have learned that polygons
1. Have all straight sides
2. Have corners, where two sides meet
3. Sides meet only at their ends
4.The sides are connected-there're aren't any gaps


Here are some of our polygons we created.

Important Information for Upcoming Events

Happy Monday!  How fortunate we are to have had such beautiful weather these last few weeks!  The days will only get nicer as we wrap up the end of school and this beautiful weather will present many opportunities for outdoor play and family time. :D  The year will be over before we know it and 2nd grade will soon be staring us in the face!  Please keep reading tonight, tomorrow night and through the summer.  It really does make such a difference!

This Wednesday is an early release day. Sorry for the short notice...it has kind of crept up on me!

Cafeteria Notice

*The cafeteria is no longer able to accept bills over $20.  Please keep this in mind as you visit your child for lunch or send in money for his/her account. There are also some menu changes you need to be aware of...

Friday, April 20 will be spaghetti with meat sauce on whole wheat pasta or corn dog, garden salad or green beans, applesauce or red grapes, and cinnamon roll

Thursday, April 26 will be hot dog with chili or grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread, coleslaw or steamed corn, pineapple tidbits or fresh tangerine

American Cancer Society Relay for Life

BES Penny Wars

It’s that time again! This week is the 3^rd annual BES Penny Wars for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society. Beginning today, Monday, April 16 and ending Friday, April 20, a collection jar for each class will be in the mini theater each morning.  Here are the rules:

Each classroom will be competing against each other. (This is school wide, not grade level.) You want to collect only pennies in your jar. All pennies count positively toward your total amount of money. You do not want dollar bills or silver change in your own jar. Any silver change or dollar bills in your jar count against your total amount of money. This is where the war comes in – you can put silver change and dollar bills in other teachers’ jars to count against their total! For example, Ms. Hudson has 100 pennies, and Ms. Kendrick has 90 pennies. Ms. Kendrick wants to win, so she puts a dollar bill in Ms. Hudson’s jar. The 100 pennies are now cancelled out by the dollar bill, and Ms. Hudson’s total is back to 0. At the end of the week, the classroom with the highest positive total will win a prize!

Please remember that the jars are in the mini theater this year and not in classrooms. You can only put money in jars in the morning! So if you want to put pennies in the jar for our class, you have to go to the theater in the morning and it has to be before we are dismissed to go to our rooms.

We will also be celebrating Paint the Campus purple week this week in honor of Relay for Life. Here are our special days:

  

Monday: Sock It To Cancer (crazy socks)

Tuesday: Hats Off to Preventing Cancer (hat day)

Wednesday: BES Against Cancer (BES spirit day) (and Sonic Night for Mrs. Sullivan)

Thursday: Team Up to Prevent Cancer (team spirit day)

Friday: Wear Lots of Purple Day (in honor of the color of Relay for Life)

*If you haven’t signed up for our Relay for Life team, there is still time! It is May 4th-May5th at Dutch Fork High School.  If you are interested in joining our please team visit the website below.   Click "Join a Team" and type in "Ballentine Bears" in the team name box.  There is a $10 donation per member to join. This donation pays for your registration, and all registration money also goes directly to our team total. If you raise $100 you will also receive a Relay t-shirt the night of the event! Once registered, you can start fundraising for Relay! Cancer survivors can register for free.

https://secure3.convio.net/tacs/site/TRR/RelayForLife/RFLFY12SA/901054319?pg=tfind&fr_id=40289

  

Questions? Email Ms. Kendrick (fifth grade teacher) at bkendric@lexrich5.org.

PTO 

I know everyone has a lot on their plates this time of year, but please consider the following:

*PTO is in need of chairpersons for several committees.  Please take the time to read the PTO Paw Print to see if there is something you may be able to contribute your time to.  

Whew, that is a lot of information. Have a wonderful week!

Columbia Marionette Theater

Before we left for Spring Break we had another on site field trip! We had the Columbia Marionette Theater come and present several Anansi the Spider tales. We had been reading Anansi stories in class and this was an awesome way to end the unit.

Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti

 The stories came  to life and the children really loved it. Take a look.

Below are some up close picture of the characters from the stories. We got to go meet the puppets and the puppeteers after the show.