In this task, you are given a list of integers and an integer k. You need to find the kth smallest element in the input list and return that.

[99, 213, 61, 207, 279, 41, 21, 34, 151, 165, 139, 102, 277, 97, 251, 79, 186, 290, 276, 229], k=4
61