california

=News from San Jose, California by Mastumoto Students.= October/November News Peralta Adobe Field Trip By Abhinav Arya and Alvin Lin  In November our class took a field trip to the Peralta Adobe, which is the oldest building in San Jose, Ca. It was built around 1776 by Manuel Gonzalez, an Apache Indian, who was one of the founders of the Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe – which was the Spanish first government in California. It has adobe walls that are four feet thick and deer skin furniture that is over 200 years old.  We got to do stuff that kids 200 years ago did. We made adobe bricks with sand, mud, straw and cow manure that helped hold them together. Everyone made one and we got to take them home. We also got to make candles. We kept dipping it in wax until it got bigger: some were bigger than my finger when they were done! In the middle of candle dipping, a parent took us to a place where we could learn to rope a bull. We learned about games kids played, how they dressed in olden days, and made toys out of cornhusks. One of the parents taught us how to grind leaves for tea and we also made tortillas from vegetables we crush and rolled out on these stone plates with stone rolling pins. All in all, Adobe Days was a fun and historical field trip.  I

 We finished the last part of Life Science by building a terrarium/habitat out of three 2-liter soda bottles. Our terrarium had different parts that all interacted with each other. We put a shrimp (which will eat any algae that grows in the bottom part of the habitat) with the White Cloud fish that will eat the elodea (a plant), while the plant will use photosynthesis to make its own food.  We put an ivy plant on the top, which is a sort of terrarium because of a plastic dome on the top. The plant breathes out and water vapor which accumulates on the side of the dome dripping back into the soil for plant’s use. If the plant needs more water there is a wick that goes down into the fish area that can suck up what the plant requires.  Our teacher said the fish in her sealed environment lasted for three years. We need to keep it in a warm environment, but not direct sunlight, and not move it around a lot.  We start rocks on Friday and we can’t wait to see what we do next. Living in California means that earthquakes will be a big part of this chapter – we hope! **By Wesley Rojas and Ananya Subramani**
 * __Life in a Soda Bottle__**

September's News

 * //No More School Library//???**

Our library at Matsumoto Elementary School in San Jose, California, will be shutting down next year because of the bad economy. The state legislature has cut the Evergreen School District budget so the schools can’t have libraries or buses any more. Mrs. Ginny Gomez, our librarian, is very sad because she knows the students love the books and without the library they probably won’t advance in their reading skills as much as they could. “Without the convenience of the school library, you will have to go to the public library or buy books to read,” she said. When the library closes Mrs. Gomez will either become a computer helper or a classroom aide. “A way to save school libraries is to let your parents know about it and tell them to attend school board meetings,” Mrs. Gomez said. She suggested they also question the board about cutting something else other than the libraries. It will depend on the Evergreen School Board if this is a permanent decision. Last year the whole Evergreen School District checked out almost 350,000 books! That would be 350,000 books hauled away to a warehouse to be stored if the district can’t find the money to keep the libraries open, she said.