Since 1984,Philadelphia has been cleaning up its act.One by one,graffiti（涂鸦）covered walls are being changed into outdoor art.So far,more than 1,800 murals（壁画）have been painted.Philadelphia now has more murals than any other American city.

    The walls that were once ugly with graffiti are now covered with beautiful pictures of historical heroes and modern art, thanks to the Mural Arts Program(MAP).Its work makes schools and public places attractive,and its citizens very proud.The program began as part of Philadelphia's Anti-Graffiti Network.Jane Golden is the MAP's artistic director."When people ask me what our program is about,"she says,"I answer them with one word: hope." Each year, the MAP offers youth art programs and workshops.Some onetime graffiti writers even help paint MAP murals.

    The MAP's work,says Golden,is all about developing a sense of community（社区）.When a neighborhood requests a mural,the MAP works with the people there to develop a message.Some messages have been "Safe Streets,"Love and Care," and "Peace Walk".

    The MAP receives up to 50 requests for murals each week. Last year, the workers painted 140 murals."The making of a mural enters people's collective memory as an extraordinary, pleasant moment in neighborhood history," says Golden, who began as a muralist in Los Angeles.

    Having a learning disability doesn't mean you can't learn, but you'll need some help and need to work extra hard. If you have a learning disability such as dyslexia or dyscalculia, remember that you are not slow or stupid.

    Learning disabilities can be genetic. That means they can be passed down in families through the genes. But kids today have an advantage over their parents. Learning experts now know a lot more about the brain and how learning works, and it's easier for kids to get the help they need.

    Dyslexia is a learning disability that means a kid has a lot of trouble reading and writing. Kids who have trouble with math may have dyscalculia. Other kids may have language disorders, meaning they have trouble understanding language and understanding what they read.

    It can be confusing, though. What qualifies as “trouble" enough to be diagnosed as a learning disability? Reading, doing math, and writing letters may be tough for lots of kids at first. But when those troubles don't fade away and it's really difficult to make any progress, it's possible that the kid has a learning disability.

    Finding out you have a learning disability can be upsetting. You might feel different from everyone else. But the truth is that learning disabilities are pretty common. And if your learning specialist or psychologist has figured out which one you're facing, you're on the right track. Now, you can start getting the help you need to do better in school.

    But for this special help to really work, you'll need to practice the new skills you're learning. It may take a lot of efforts every day. That can be a challenge, but you can do it soon, you'll enjoy the results of all your hard work: more fun and success at school.

    Yesterday I cleared up my house and I mean really cleared up my house. The room that gave the most results was my husband's "office". There I found: one right-footed shoe, size 10 (he lost the other one somewhere), a set of Star Wars videos and two small china cats someone gave me last birthday. I collected these "finds" and took them downstairs and logged (登录）on to eBay: the answer to all our rubbish.

    What is eBay? It aims to provide a global trading platform where almost anyone can trade almost anything. The idea came from Pierre Omidyar. Born in Paris, Omidyar moved to Washington when he was still a child. At High School he became very interested in computer programming and after graduating from Tufts University in 1988, he worked for the next few years as a computer engineer. In his free time he started eBay as a kind of hobby, originally offering the service free by word of mouth. By 1996 there was so much traffic on the site that he had to upgrade and he began collecting fees. Joined by a friend, Peter Skoll and in 1998 by his dynamic CEO, Meg Whitman, he has never looked back. Even in the great dot-com crashes of the late 1990s eBay went from strength to strength. It is now one of the ten most visited online shopping sites on the Internet.

    If you think about it, it's a perfect Internet idea. All you have to do is take an e-photo, write a description, fill out a sales form and you're in business; the world is your market place.

    Some of the more bizarre goods up for offer have been a piece of French bread, partially eaten by Justin Timberlake, advertising space on a man's head, and a pair of used false teeth.

    One week later I am proud of having a clean and tidy home and € 110 in cash. Someone even bought the shoe.

    BOXTEL, Netherlands — chickens roam the orchards, cows chew the cud and pigs roll in the mud on a warm day on a Dutch farm ——but the pastoral (乡村)scene is not as traditional as it seems.

    The farm is owned and run by a cooperative of hundreds of local consumers and aims to change habits in a low-lying country engaged in an existential fight against climate change. Nearly 200 families decide what the farm will produce — and they will eventually eat — and employ a farmer to tend to the animals for meat and eggs and grow the dozen kinds of fruits and vegetables.

    "The main aim of the members is to eat natural products, produced near to where they live, in a more sustainable (可持续的)way," said Douwe Korting, co-leader of the Boxtel Cooperative, in the southern Netherlands. People are really starting to see that a change toward a different way of eating is essential," he added.

    It costs 2,000 euros ($2,200) to join the collective (集体的)farm, which is 10 minutes by bicycle from the town, and then a weekly fee of around 10 euros per person.

    In return, members receive the food they want and stress the importance of knowing what they eat is local and seasonal.

    Known as Herenboderderij, or People's Farming, the guiding principle is that everything centers on the needs and riches of nature, even while using new technologies, " said its founder Geert van der Veer. Soon the poultry (家禽) will be joined by a robot that can sense when the fruit is ripe, as well as a drone that will survey the fields to support and reduce the needs for manpower.

Are you looking for a great day camp program for your little ones this summer? Here we have rounded up some of the best summer camps close to New York.

Atletico de Madrid

This camp once worked with Arsenal Football Club. It offers boys and girls aged 5-16 chances to train with one of the world's most successful soccer colleges. Two players from die camp will be chosen by coaches to play a game in Madrid in October. This year, this camp will be running for two weeks.

Abrons Art Center

The Abrons Art Center offers learning experiences in dance, music and theater to campers aged 5-13. Campers will take part in an exchange with professional artists and arts workers, who will explain the artistic process. Extended (延长的) day classes provide more opportunities for arts learning.

A Montessori Summer

A Montessori Summer is for children aged 3.5-14. Each week, the program provides the students with a day trip away from school. Usually, children can enjoy the trips to beaches, parks and wildlife preserves (保护区) and they also go mountain-climbing. Certainly, these activities make students' life more colorful.

92Y

The 92Y offers all kinds of experiences to every camper, from their outdoor day camps in beautiful Rockland County (suitable for kids from 5-13 years of age) to their Preschool Day Camp for kids from 3-5 years of age. They also include more camps in the city for kids aged 3-18. From sports to language learning to adventure camps, every kid can pick whatever they like.

Back in April 1939 and armed with $5,000 provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, professor Frank Cyr at Teachers College, Columbia University took a tour of ten states to make the research about school transportation problems. What he found was that many students had no dependable way to get to school and the ones who did often travelled in unsafe buses in the over 100,000 school areas.

Seeing a need to fix this problem, Cyr organised a meeting—one that would change the future of school buses forever. School officials and transportation experts met to set much-needed standards for buses, including those for colour, height and width as well as safety rules that hadn't been set before or that were different in every state.

There were many different bus colours in the US before this meeting; several areas even planned to have red, white and blue buses as a way of encouraging students to love their country. Cyr presented his new choice to education officials, a reported "50 shades( 色度) changing from lemon yellow to deep orange red". The matter was settled quickly. Yellow, or "National School Bus Glossy Yellow", was chosen because it was quite striking, making the school bus easy to be seen. Besides, it made the bold(黑体的), black writing on the side of each bus clear. (The bold, black writing gives information about each school area, telling students which school bus they could take during early morning and late afternoon hours.) Thirty-five states made the changes quickly, and every state took them on

board by 1974.

Being recognised as the "father of the yellow school bus", Frank Cyr has surely influenced your life if you ever rode a school bus or saw that noticeable colour pulling up to your stop on a dusky morning.