Scientists often see the first ten years of a child's life as the “window of opportunity”.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}And studies show that the following activities can benefit their brain greatly.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Free playtime has always been an important part of “being a kid”, but it is also important to a child's development. “Free play” not only helps kids develop different skills, it also helps them develop into happy healthy adults in the future.

Read with kids

    Reading has long been known to improve children's intelligence.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} For parents who don't have much time, just surrounding your kids with books goes a long way too.

Put kids to bed early

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Preschool children should get at least eleven hours of sleep and kids up to age 12 should try to get at least ten hours of sleep.

Learn a second language

    Early studies in this field have shown that bilingual （双语的）kids can perform better under pressure. Young children can learn new languages with nearly perfect fluency （流利）and pronunciation.

Praise good effort not intelligence

    Your kids may be smart but you should mainly praise the effort they put into tasks. Kids, who are praised on intelligence, often feel it is a fixed quality, and mistakes or failures badly hurt their self-confidence. Kids who are praised on effort often focus more on learning.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Play some helpful games

B. Give them enough playtime

C. And they are not afraid to fail and try again

D. Kids still need time away from the TV to do homework

E. Kids who read often develop earlier writing and number skills as well

F. Everything at this time is very important to the development of a person's brain

G. Studies show that kids with regular bedtimes are better at languages, math and reading

    Music is magic! Music speaks louder than words and it is a “language” that the whole world can understand. A piece of music can produce a response in the heart and mind. Like feeling an electrical current or receiving a personal radio signal, music has a spiritual effect on a person. Different kinds of music influence people in different ways.

    I have listened to music all my life. When I was twelve years old, the Beatles came to America and my whole world opened up. Maybe young people today cannot understand the influence of the Beatles when they exploded across America. Their influence changed the way we dressed, looked, acted and spoke... even our culture. The Beatles arrived in America from the UK just under three months after the assassination(暗杀) of President John Kennedy, which had put America into a great depression. And the freshness and lively spirit of the Beatles was exactly what the country needed to refresh itself.

    Music links the heart of the hearer with that of the composer. This means that it mixes the spirit of the composer with your spirit when you listen to it. And the music can take your spirit out of your body and transport you into another world. Music has a great way of touching people. Music can make you laugh, cry or shout. It's also a great source of inspiration.

    Try this one day and notice what happens: make yourself a cup of tea, sit on your sofa and play one of your favorite songs. Close your eyes, and soon you'll find yourself creating vivid mental images—matching the music that you are listening to.

    Winter is a really fun time of the year—it's great to have snowball fights and build snowmen{#blank#}1{#/blank#} When it's cold outside and you're not prepared, you can feel uncomfortable. Lucky for you, learning how to stay safe is not difficult.

    ●{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Wearing thick clothes is the best way to stay warm in the cold. Depending on where you live and how cold it is, some kids may need more clothes, some less.

    ●Take that hat. You maybe wear a large overcoat and ready to go, but are you forgetting something?{#blank#}3{#/blank#} You'll stay much warmer with a hat than without one—tons of body heat escapes right from your head.

    ●Drink up. Sounds like advice for hot weather, not cold weather, right?{#blank#}4{#/blank#} When you're outside in the cold and breathing hard, your body loses a lot of water through your breath. And the best way to get that water back is to drink up!

    ●Take it easy. Sometimes if you're out having fun, it's easy to forget to pay attention to your body. But if your body temperature drops even 4 or 5 degrees while you're out side, it can make you feel terrible{#blank#}5{#/blank#} And if you ever feel weak, those are signs that you have to take it easy indoors for a while.

A.Love those clothes.

B.Have a snowball fight.

C. Pull a hat onto your head.

D. That's why you need to be careful with your body s signals.

E. Well, the truth is that it's good advice for both kinds of weather.

F. but you have to know how to be safe while you're out having fun.

G. You can stay outside as long as possible to fully enjoy your snow days.

    Time management is the greatest challenge for me in high school．I have to take good care of my subjects, activities, social life and rest．I was often angry with my family members just because I didn't plan my time well．For example, I might shout at them for troubling me when I was working．And sometimes I might say something bad to them when I missed deadlines, even if it was actually my fault for cramming everything in (把所有的事情堆积起来) at the last minute．

    As time goes by, I realize that time management is very important in our everyday life．The best advice to deal with time management is “break it into bits”．It's really important for you to learn how to break a big project into small, manageable tasks．Then you can work progressively and have a sense of achievement whenever you've done with a small part．

    Another piece of advice is to plan a timetable for yourself．It doesn't have to be the one that you follow completely．It's just there to serve as a guide．You can compare your actual timetable with the planned one to see how well you actually use your time．The final suggestion is to always set deadlines for yourself．

    A day in the life of 18­year­old David Lanster is full of typical teenage stuff: school, baseball practice and homework. And then he starts cooking. "Some nights I'm up until 1: 00 a. m. making pies, or even later if we're cooking beef," said the student at Ransom Everglades High School in Florida, US.

    For the past year, Lanster and Kelly Moran, his classmate, have been hosting fancy dinner parties at Lanster's parents' home. Their meals have 17 courses and are all made by themselves. Their guests used to give them gifts to thank them until the pair decided to do something nice for charity. "We got some really great Miami Heat tickets, a nice watch, and many kitchen gadgets (小器具)," Lanster said. "But we wanted to make this something positive for people other than us."

    Lanster and Moran focus on Common Threads, a charity that aims to teach kids in poor communities to cook and make healthy eating choices. The young cooks ask their guests to give however much they want as payment for their meals. It all goes to Common Threads because Lanster's parents cover their food costs. After their last 12­person event, Lanster and Moran gave $1,600 to the charity.

    Now, they're taking their show out of the kitchen and on the road. They have started to organize private dinner parties with a similar model: the host pays for the ingredients, and the guests make a donation to a charity of their choice.

    Without formal training, Lanster said he had been interested in cooking since he helped his mom in the kitchen when he was very young. He learned how to cook by reading cookbooks and watching TV programs. Outside the kitchen, the two are busy preparing their college applications. Neither of them is sure what they will do in the future, but they've promised their parents that they will leave professional cooking alone until they finish school.

    India has a very vast history and heritage (遗产). The country has witnessed some of the most important events in the past and every event has an effect of its own on the culture, religion, lifestyle, and economy of the country. This is one of the leading reasons why tourists prefer India to travel and explore. Historical tours in India provide everything that a traveler expects from his/her journey. These historical tours give an opportunity to study and explore Indian history.

    Historical tours of India generally consisted of four phases: ancient, medieval (中世纪的), modern India and contemporary (当代的) India. Some of the historical travel packages are:

    Forts and Palaces

    The rich cultural past of India is reflected in the countless forts (堡垒) and palaces across the country. Most of the forts were constructed as a defense device to keep the enemy away and palaces were made on the names of the kings and queens. Some of the famous forts and palaces are: Agra Fort (Agra), Fatehpur Sikri (Agra), Hawa Mahal (Jaipur), Amber Fort (Jaipur), City Palace (Jaipur), Gwalior Fort (Gwalior), Mysore Palace (Mysore), Red Fort (Delhi), etc.

    India Heritage Tours

    The main purpose of India Heritage tours is to make Indians as well as tourists familiar with the rich Indian legacy (遗产). The heritage of the country is at least 5000 years. Some of the heritage tours are: medieval heritage, Rajput heritage, Golden Triangle, splendid Gujarat, etc.

    South India Historical Tours

    The Southern India is known for its diversity and there are many places, which (景区) in South India include Goa, Cochin, Kerala, Munnar, Periyar, Kottayam and the list goes on and on.