Benjamin West, the father of American painting, showed his talent for art when he was only six years of age. But he did not know about brushes before a visitor told him he needed one. In those days , a brush was made from camel's hair. There were no camels nearby. Benjamin decided that cat hair would work instead. He cut some fur from the family cat to make a brush.

    The brush did not last long. Soon Benjamin needed more fur. Before long, the cat began to look ragged （蓬乱）. His father said that the cat must be sick. Benjamin was forced to admit what he had been doing.

    The cat's lot was about to improve.  That year, one of Benjamin's cousins, Mr.Pennington, came to visit. He was impressed with Benjamin's drawings. When he went home, he sent Benjamin a box of paint and some brushes. He also sent six engravings （版画）by an artist. These were the first pictures and first real paint and brushes Benjamin had ever seen. In 1747，when Benjamin was nine years old，Mr.Pennington retured for another visit .He was amazed at what Benjamin had done with his gift.He asked  Benjamin's parents if he might take the boy to Philadelphia for a visit.

In the city, Mr.Pennington gave Benjamin materials for creating oil paintings.The boy began a landscape (风景) painting.Wiliams ,a well-known painter,came to see him work . Wiliams was impressed with Benjamin and gave him two classic books on painting to take home .The books were long and dull. Benjamin could read only a little,having been a poor student.But he later said,”Those two books were my companions by day,and under my pillow at night.”While it is likely that he understood very little of the books,they were his introduction to classical paintings.The nine-year-old boy decided then that he would be an artist.

    The first Europeans to occupy Canada's Prince Edward Island were the French in the 1500s. At that time, its name was Ile Saint-Jean. When the British took over in 1758, they changed the name to its current one in honor of Prince Edward, the first son of Britain's King George Ⅲ.

    Today many communities find their places in Prince Edward Island, but Charlottetown is the only one that can call itself a metropolitan(大都市)area, despite the fact that it is a small one. About 60,000 people live in the city and surrounding area. The city's center area remains relatively unchanged from its 19th century beginnings. Charlottetown's boardwalk runs alongside the water, past docks, boats, shops and restaurants. Historic homes line the streets. During summer months, costumed characters walk around the city and tell of it history.

    Cavendish beach welcomes beach lovers. The gulf streams makes the water warm and wonderful for swimming, and the island's 1,760-kilometer coastline means a beach is never far away.

    Nine of PEI's 63 lighthouses will welcome visitors in the summer. Besides enjoying stunning views from the tops, visitors can browse in the small museums and learn about the island's history.

The most popular time to visit PE I is July to August, when the average temperature reaches 23℃ during the day. From January to February, the average daytime high is only -3.3℃. Each winter, an average 318.2 centimeters of snow fall on the island, covering it with a white blanket.

    Considering the island's many visitors, it's no surprise that tourism is important there. Other key industries on the island are agriculture, fishing and information technology. With so much to offer, the island is naturally a desirable place to live as well.

    What's your favorite online magazine for kids? Here are four that are worth a look and a read.

    National Geographic Kids

    Parents, students, and teachers can take the help of this quality resource to learn about people, places, science, space, history, nature, and various fun activities. The magazine aims for the age group of 8-14. Interactive content includes videos, games, photos, blogs, etc. This is one online magazine that parents and teachers will always choose without hesitation (犹豫).

    TIME For Kids

    TIME magazine for adults might be too serious. The version for kids isn't but it does go deep with a lot of educational content and teaching resources that are helpfully arranged around grades. The weekly classroom news magazine covers world news and aims to develop the reading and analyzing (分析) habit in kids.

    Weekly Reader

    An offline and online magazine for elementary school students features a lot of educational tools for teachers and students alike. All of its magazines are arranged around grades from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. Lots of the tools are interactive and based around nicely designed stories that make learning fun. Some sections are open to only subscribers (注册人) though.

Highlights

    Highlights, com brings out magazines for kids of ages 2-12. The publication group's purpose is to help children become their best selves. The homepage also gives you further websites to explore like Puzzlemaniakids.com and Highlightskids.com. Play free online puzzles, solve riddles, go creative with fun activities, and even learn a little about nature and science at these two sites. For instance, you can go into a story adventure or create your own stories at The Timbertoes.

C

    As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line（装配线） on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.

    Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.

    In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial power.

    The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.

    The problems of excessive（过度的）energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.

    Friedman points out that the green economy（经济）is a chance to keep American strength. "The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century."

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as even when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. He can play catch and hit a ball as well as his son. A mother who has not thought about the words for years can teach her daughter the poem that begins "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" or remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, additional learning trials(尝试) increase the length of time we will remember it.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, bicycle riding, and playing baseball long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables(乘法口诀表) are an exception(例外) to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming(突击学习)for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to get by on the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.

    An 8-year-old southeast Kansas girl is being praised for her quick, calm thinking. She grabbed the steering wheel(方向盘) and drove the family's SUV when her mother fell unconscious on their highway ride to school.

    Abby Porter and her mom, Shelly, were heading for her school in Riverton when Shelly had a medical emergency. She passed out(昏倒) behind the wheel.

    Abby is a second-grader whose father sometimes lets her drive their tractor. With her mother falling down heavily, Abby leaned over and took the wheel. At some point, Abby even successfully performed a U-turn on the four-lane highway, because she was going home to her daddy, according to Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont.

    "That was at 8:37 in the morning, and there was a lot of traffic," Delmont said. Officer Jimmy Hamilton noticed the SUV going about 20 mph and weaving a bit between the two lanes. He suspected someone was driving under the influence. As he got closer, he noticed the woman fell over in the driver's seat and saw Abby at the wheel.

    Hamilton tried to get in front of Abby's car to slow her down, but she kept switching lanes to avoid bumping into his car. Hamilton got alongside her and told Abby to stop the vehicle, but she didn't know how. He then told her she needed to bump into him to stop the car, but Abby said she didn't want to because she was afraid. He convinced Abby bumping into his car was OK.

    "I never saw her cry," Hamilton said. "From just the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, you could tell she was scared. But she stayed with it."

    Emergency crews got Abby's mother to the hospital, but Delmont said he didn't know what caused her to lose consciousness.

    The police department in Galena, a town of about 3,000 residents about 150 miles south of Kansas City, planned to present Abby with a plaque(匾牌) for "outstanding bravery in a life-threatening situation".