Pikacha -- Blogmeister

4th grade I am a student in the 4th grade RL program in Del Paso Manor. In 4th grade there are a lot of things that happen like field trips, many science experiments, and believe me it all might be a little hard, but it turns out to be really fun. In all the subjects you can learn a lot of things, and they are really interesting. In the Language Arts subject we get to read some books and then learn the meanings of some words that seem really hard. Some of the book name’s are The Cay, By the Great Horn Spoon, The Terrible Wave, and The Phantom Tollbooth. Another awesome thing that is cool in 4th grade is the field trips that happen during 4th grade. They are the Railroad Museum, Del Norte Club, Westminster Woods, the Mondavi Center, Old Sacramento, Coloma, and many other field trips. In science, my class does a lot of experiments. My class is also the only class that does the science fair. All the experiments my class and I do are really exciting. My teacher is Mr. La Marr, and he is the BEST teacher ever! He made 4TH grade really fun; you wouldn’t want to leave him when the school year was about to end. But 4th grade was AWESOME!

Disasters in Old Sacramento
Old Sacramento went through a lot of problems, and some disasters brought destruction. One disaster was the floods that happened during that time. One flood was during 1850, another flood was during 1852, and finally the last flood was during
1862. The people of Old Sacramento were tired of being flooded by the Sacramento River, so they decided to raise the city up.

Another disaster that struck Old Sacramento with destruction was the fire of 1852. Everyone thought that all the buildings would just fall down, but amazingly a building called The Lady Adams survived the fire of 1852. It survived the fire because it was made of bricks and had sand, metal, and extra bricks on the roof; these items were fire resistant so it protected The Lady Adams during the fire. But the roof collapsed in 1971 because of the weight on the roof. The people of Old Sacramento learned a lesson of building their buildings with bricks, sand, and metal.

Rain
Like a silver mist on a winter morning
Like a cold shower on a hot summer day
Like a soft pleasant music on a tired evening
Like the sound of cheers from a winning team
Like a delightful joy of a little kid on Christmas morn
Like the showers of blessings from heavens above
Like the droplets spreading peace around the world

The Forest Very tall trees hovering over me
The creaking of branches as the wind pushes against them
The light rain drops as they fall on me
The incense of the cedar trees
The rough rugged bark of the trees

Tide pools
Small, rocky
Amazing, interesting, splashing
Water stagnant, illusion, fancy
Deceive, mock, delude
Unreal, misleading
Mirage

Campfire
Hot, blazing
Warming, flaring, igniting
Warmth on a chilly evening
Mystifying

WESTMINISTER WOODS
Best time for me
Enormous place
Super
Terrific

Tons of fun
Really awesome
Irresistible
Popular

In the story The Terrible Wave written by Marden Dahlstedt, I have two opinions of what I think. My first one is about the action of the story. The second is about the scary parts of the story.
My first opinion of this story made by Marden Dahlstedt is that there is a lot of action which makes the story more interesting to me. A passage from the story that is descriptive is, “The wedge of light suddenly widened. There was a long hiss and gurgle of rushing water. Megan felt herself being pushed, as if a mighty hand, through the jagged crack between darkness and light. The force of the movement sent her flying. Flailing her arms, she rushed through the rainy air.” This passage was found in chapter 3 on page 24. I like this because the chapter has a lot of action in it. It gives a visual picture of what is happening and is really exciting to me. The chapter stops like a cliffhanger. It creates curiosity of what would happen next, and I really want to read the next chapter.
My second opinion of the story was that Marden Dahlstedt put a lot of scary parts to make a high climax throughout the story. This made me get scared and excited. A passage from the story is about Megan landing on a mattress after she got pushed out from her house by the wave, “A piano drifted beside her, its white keys looking like a grinning mouth. Megan stared at it uncomprehendingly. It was a nightmare world. Nothing seemed real anymore.” Another passage from the story is, “Megan looked at the old man in awe. “Is she…is dead…dead?” she whispered. He shook his head solemnly. “No,” he replied. “She’s broken her leg, I think. Poor dear, from the pain of it…” His voice trailed off. He looked at Brian with a mute appeal.” This passage is from chapter 4 on page 34. I like this because when something scary happens in the chapter, I get a lot of scary thoughts as I think about what happened.
I like how Marden Dahlstedt made the story to be a little more exciting by adding some action and also some things that makes the chapter scarier by making the climax of the story high.

The most important thing in California’s history
I think the most important thing in California’s history is becoming a part of United States. During the 1840’s, the Americans believed that they should grow from the East Coast to the West Coast, to take over other countries in North America, and to gain Texas by a quick little war. President Polk believed in an idea called Manifest Destiny while he was running for president. When he was selected as president, he used “Manifest Destiny”, which meant to make the settlers to go west to get more wealth and opportunity for other people.

During that time, the United States was asking the Mexicans if they could buy some land. When the Mexicans refused to sell the land, the United States went to war with the Mexico to get the land. Since the United States looked like they were winning, everyone thought that President Polk’s dream of gaining Texas was becoming true. Even though the United States won the war, the Mexicans won the battle in California due to their soldiers, weapons, and ammunition.

On February 2nd 1848, the “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo” was signed in Guadalupe Hidalgo to stop the war. Mexico gave more than 525,000 square miles of land. Mexico also gave the United States land that became four full states and parts of three others. Thus, California became a part of United States, and this is the most important thing in the history of California. After that, nothing really changed. The United States and the Mexicans’ rules and laws were the same. But California’s rights were guaranteed. Later on, the discovery of gold was made in California by James Marshall.